Organizations defending human rights in El Salvador updated this Thursday the count of people who died during the emergency regime in the Central American country and the figure would rise to 132 deaths in state custody, according to calculations by the Cristosal organization.
Lawyer Zaira Navas, a Cristosal investigator, told the voice of america that this number is still partial “because we are processing data”, with which they hope to have the final report in mid-April and added that “there are more people”.
Although other organizations handle other figures, they generally agree that the number of deaths has been increasing. In this sense, the Humanitarian Legal Aid organization has recorded 126 dead people who were detained in the last year, the vast majority ended up in hospitals when they were already transferred unconscious by officers of the Directorate of Penitentiary Centers.
The organizations say they have relied on some forensic reports delivered by relatives to be able to record the fatalities; In other cases, it has been the families of the victims who have documented with photographs the bruises and blows on the corpses. Many have also disobeyed the orders of the authorities by opening the sealed coffins that they were given with the bodies, because at first They told them “that they had died from COVID-19.”
Legal Aid says in its report that its database has been made up of complaints that have come to its offices directly from relatives and that “this is not an official figure, because many cases did not come to light because some families preferred to keep quiet” and bury their dead in silence.
For its part, Cristosal in its preliminary report indicates that its information base has been completed with testimonies from people who were detained and statements from relatives who witnessed the moment in which the public security forces took their family, together with the brief forensic reports and photographs taken of the bodies.
For months these organizations have indicated that, in many documented cases, the causes of death written in the Forensic Medicine expert report do not specify or indicate the signs of violence in the bodies.
“A significant number were beaten at the time of the arrest; Others suffered serious injuries and were not given medical attention, and in other cases they were victims of abuse and torture inside prisons,” the non-governmental body stated.
President Nayib Bukele denied last October that the deaths were related to ill-treatment in prisons; but a publication of Factum Magazine Indian that, according to internal reports from the National Civil Police (PNC) to which this journalistic investigative outlet had access, the public security authority recognizes at least 6 homicides within prisons and another 24 cases -to be investigated- occurred within the bartolinas of police stations during the first 50 days of the emergency regime, who would have perished due to excessive use of force.
Bukele said during a live broadcast on social networks: “I have heard the opposition say that people die in prisons. And that we are somehow killing the inmates or leaving them to die […] But people die in prisons like they die outside because they get sick, because they get old; there are some who have terminal illnesses, etc.
However, the organizations’ records only include people detained during the year of the state of emergency, he told the VOA the lawyer Zaira Navas.
Who were they, where did they die and what did they do?
The organizations have also tried to create profiles of the deceased, what they did, where they were captured and where they died, in addition to the age ranges and whether or not they had gang ties due to the motivations of the authorities to capture them.
The data indicates that in 94% of the cases, the deceased did not have ties to gangs; The highest percentage of deaths, over 54%, is made up of men between 18 and 40 years of age, followed by the group of 8 people over 60 years of age.
As for the places where they died, the greatest indication falls on the Izalco Penal Center, in the western department of Sonsonate, where the organizations have recorded that 4 out of 10 deaths occurred, although forensic reports locate the interior of the Jorge Hospital Mazzini where 29% of the total deaths of the detainees were certified.
Human rights defenders have also collected data on the occupations of the deceased at the time of their capture, “the majority were informal merchants, store owners, mill operators, taxi drivers, picacheros, farmers, four evangelical pastors and one trade unionist.” records the Legal Aid report.
During the first year of the state of emergency, there have also been 4,723 cases of violations of fundamental rights that have been documented and many processed with international surveillance organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), they pointed out.
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