The Peruvian government confirmed on Sunday that the Chargé d’Affaires of the Mexican Embassy in Lima, Carla Ornelas, left the Andean country amid its conflict after the asylum that the Mexican authorities granted to former Peruvian Prime Minister Betsy Chavez, who is being prosecuted on charges of rebellion in the self-coup carried out by former President Pedro Castillo in 2022.
The National Immigration Control Authority announced in a brief message on the social network
This announcement comes after the executive branch headed by José Giri decided to sever bilateral relations with Mexico and expel the representative of the diplomatic mission in Lima at the beginning of the week, when it became known that the asylum granted by Mexico to Chavez had been lost.
In this sense, the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated this weekend that it had analyzed the request for safe passage of the former leader of the Andean state and decided that “there has been a negative development in (international practices)” of the Caracas Convention governing political asylum.
“In recent years, this rule has been abused, with ordinary crimes being classified as cases of political persecution. The Peruvian government considers that this practice distorts the essence of the Convention, which aims to protect citizens of member states of the Inter-American System from political persecution,” the diplomatic bag added, before announcing that it would “submit to the Organization of American States a proposal to amend” the text adopted in 1954 “to prevent this distortion (…) from occurring.”
The severing of relations came less than two months after the Peruvian judiciary imposed on Chavez the obligation to obtain a judicial permit to be able to leave Lima, and also issued a decree to conduct biometric monitoring every seven days when considering the existence of a risk of flight for the former head of government. The Constitutional Court ordered his release the previous week after he spent several days on hunger strike and announced an appeal against the constitutional grievance filed by his defence.
Until then, Chavez had been detained in a prison in Lima province after being placed in pretrial detention in June 2023 as part of the investigation into the alleged crime of rebellion and conspiracy of Castillo’s failed self-coup attempt.
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