Amnesty International calls for the “reversal” of the emergency regime

SAN SALVADOR – Given the more than 5,000 complaints of human rights violations registered by a group of seven civil organizations in El Salvador, and the 132 deaths of inmates in state custody indicated by Amnesty International (AI), this organization requested on Monday the government of El Salvador reverse the state of emergency and reestablish the rights suspended by the measure.

“Amnesty International once again urges the government of President [Nayib] Bukele and the rest of the State authorities to adopt the necessary measures to reverse the emergency regime, restore the suspended rights, investigate effectively, autonomously and independently the dramatic consequences of this measure; and guarantee reparation measures for the victims”, ensures in a statement the organization.

Likewise, AI called on the “international mechanisms for the protection of human rights” to intervene urgently in El Salvador in order to avoid an “even greater” human rights crisis in the Central American country.

“The international community is on alert about the serious consequences in terms of human rights that the emergency regime is generating in El Salvador. (…) The Salvadoran State must be certain that the international community will not tolerate this type of policy ”, says Erika Guevara Rosas, director for the Americas of Amnesty International, referring to the emergency regime in which El Salvador has been maintained for a year.

According to the organization, Nayib Bukele’s security policy has led to more than 66,000 detentions, mostly arbitrary; In addition to being subjected to mistreatment and torture, flagrant violations of due process, forced disappearances and the death of at least 132 people in the custody of the State, who at the time of their death had not been found guilty of any crime.

For this, Amnesty International assures, “the coordination, in complicity, of the three powers of the State has been key; the preparation of a legal framework contrary to international human rights standards, specifically with regard to criminal proceedings; and the lack of adoption of measures tending to avoid systematic violations of human rights under an exceptional regime”.

The emergency regime was decreed in El Salvador on March 27, 2022, after a peak in homicides in which 87 people were killed by gangs, something that Amnesty International considers the consequence of a “break” in the alleged pact that the president from El Salvador maintained with the MS and Barrio 18 gangs to reduce violence.

El Salvador has defended its heavy-handed policy, assuring that this was the key for the country to emerge from the scourge committed by gangs in recent decades.

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