Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, begins his fourth year in government this June 1, keeping his country in a State of Exception. More than a year after that decree, the NGO Cristosal published a shocking report in which it exhibits the inhumane conditions suffered by the prisoners.
“The prisons are no longer the headquarters of the gangs, there are no parties, drugs, graffiti, prostitutes, or orders to kill,” said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a year ago.
However, prisons that are overflowing with inmates who arrived without due process have become “concentration camps,” according to David Morales, head of transitional justice for Cristosal.whose report reveals a serious human rights crisis.
“Definitely the population deprived of liberty under the emergency regime is in conditions that we can compare to concentration camps. In fact, people suffer from extreme overcrowding. Cells with a capacity for 15 or 20 people house more than 100 or up to 200 people,” says Morales.
“They are not given enough food, and what little food and water they are given is contaminated. They suffer beatings, there are reports of electric shocks, medicines are not provided to chronically ill people, nor are they given medical assistance. So we have cases of people who had ailments, were not given proper care and died. We have no indication that the Attorney General’s Office is investigating these deaths, despite the fact that some have these characteristics of violence and could be extra-legal executions inside prisons,” denounces the head of Cristosal’s transitional justice.
In its report, the NGO highlights that many detainees do not belong to the gangs.
“One of the most important findings that we have verified throughout this year under the emergency regime is that thousands of people who are arbitrarily detained are not gang members. This is what is happening. Some testimonies from people who have been in these prisons and after several months have been released do not mention that they were detained in cells where between ten and 30% of the detainees were gang members, but the remaining population of detainees, the 50-70% were people who had nothing to do with gangs,” says David Morales, head of Transitional Justice at Cristosal.
