IACHR on the exceptional regime in El Salvador

Four months ago, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) summoned the Salvadoran State to a hearing to assess the situation of human rights around the exceptional regime decreed in El Salvador, which by then had been in force for two months. The State did not respond to the call.

This October 25, the IACHR convened again for the same purpose, and the response was once again the same: absence on the part of the Salvadoran State.

“When the state of emergency becomes a rule, we have a serious problem”: these were the words of the commissioner president of the IACHR, Julissa Mantilla, after listening to the testimonies of civil organizations regarding the emergency regime in El Salvador.

El Salvador has been in a regime for seven months that seeks to imprison 70,000 gang members responsible for the latest wave of violence that occurred at the end of March this year. The arrests have not stopped since then and to date, the Central American government has arrested 55,062 people, but are they all gang members?

According to six organizations that requested a hearing with the IACHR, the exceptional regime has left in its wake three major types of human rights violations: arbitrary or illegal detentions, acts constituting torture and ill-treatment, and the deaths of people in prisons.

“We have documented 4,071 cases of alleged human rights violations that occurred during the emergency regime (…) and there are 80 families that are still waiting for a response from the Salvadoran state regarding the death of their relative who was in state custody,” Verónica denounced before the IACHR. Reyna, coordinator at the Passionist Social Service organization.

Although the Salvadoran government did not appear before the IACHR, it has said on other occasions that a policy such as the emergency regime implies a margin of error of 1% in terms of those captured. In other words, if there are 55,052 captured to date, it is possible that at least 550 are innocent.

But the organizations also speak of “illegality” in the extension of the regime, since the Political Constitution of El Salvador maintains that it should only be extended “if the circumstances that motivated it continue.”

At the end of March, El Salvador experienced the worst wave of homicidal violence that had not occurred in recent history: 88 people were murdered in one weekend by the violent MS and Barrio 18 gangs. The Assembly, at the request of the government, approved a of exception that has been extended seven consecutive times, despite the fact that there has not been another rise in homicides since then.

Another of the points addressed in the hearing was prison overcrowding. According to Zaira Navas, legal head of the Cristosal organization, overpopulation and prison overcrowding in El Salvador “are enormous.”

“El Salvador is the country with the most people deprived of liberty in the world. With a rate of 2,144 people incarcerated for every 100,000 inhabitants. Before the emergency regime there were about 39,000 detainees. Now they are over 94,000,” he added.

This overpopulation causes fights, illnesses and punishments, according to the organizations requesting the hearing.

What do the organizations ask the IACHR?

In the voice of Belissa Guerrero, coordinator at Amnesty International, the requesting organizations asked the IACHR to redouble efforts so that the Salvadoran State opens itself to international scrutiny. This after her absence in the last two hearings.

Likewise, they asked that the Commission “urge” the State to end the exceptional regime and all the regulations that violate human rights approved in this context.”

Also that there is a “serious, exhaustive and impartial investigation into the people who have lost their lives in state custody. As well as those who have suffered violations of their personal integrity, including mistreatment and torture.

Amnesty International, Cristosal, Fespad, Passionist Social Service, DFPL, among other organizations, asked the IACHR to visit El Salvador in order to verify the situation of persons deprived of liberty; as well as the hearings that are held for those arrested and the development of criminal investigations.

What did the IACHR say?

First, he regretted the absence of the Salvadoran State at the hearing. The first president of the Commission, Stuardo Ralón, said that what was heard in the testimonies of the organizations spoke of a “dramatic, alarming and reprehensible situation” in El Salvador.

Likewise, the commissioner president of the Commission, Julissa Mantilla, recalled that the States are part of the Inter-American System voluntarily and that the hearings are the mechanism that the IACHR has to monitor the human rights situation in the countries.

Although he also resented the absence of the Salvadoran State at the hearing, he asked the government of El Salvador to authorize the Commission’s visit to the country. A request that he said has already been done internally.

“Submitting to international scrutiny is simply being able to guarantee the human rights of people and above all to stop so much pain, so much injustice that is taking place. I do not want to remain in the absence of the State but in the possibility that the IACHR has to visit El Salvador, to analyze the situation of violence from there, ”she concluded.

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