Dozens of prisoners died from torture, beatings, strangulation, injuries or due to lack of attention to mortal illnesses. This is the result of an exhaustive investigation carried out by the Cristosal organization in El Salvador, which denounces the human rights violations committed in the last year of the state of emergency decreed by President Nayib Bukele in his so-called ‘war against gangs’. The result of the investigation describes a regime of terror.
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They seem like stories from the darkest periods of the Salvadoran past. The interviewees say that they were forced to pick up food from the floor with their mouths, suffered electric shocks or were exposed for a long time and without treatment to epidemics of skin fungus. Of the 153 deaths documented in the report by the NGO Cristosal, 29 were due to violent death.
The investigation indicates that the common pattern of 75 cases of deceased inmates reported after the close of the study is the presence of lacerations and bruises on the corpses that show blows, injuries with a short sharp object and, above all, strangulation or hanging.
Emulating the repression of dictatorships
According to forensic medical reports, the most frequent cause of death of these prisoners under the government’s emergency regime is mechanical asphyxia or immersion, precisely one of the torture methods most used by the security services between 1970 and 1992 during the civil war in El Salvador.
Another type of torture that survivors have revealed is the isolation cells used by “those who complain, talk at night or do not follow the orders of the guards.” Forced to spend days in these narrow and dark cells, without drinking water, without a pit or toilet, many of the prisoners return malnourished or do not come out alive, says the report.
A state policy
Since its application, on March 27, 2022, the emergency regime has been harshly criticized by humanitarian organizations inside and outside the country. Today, the disapproval of the detractors of the measure is gaining strength not only for having been extended for more than a year but also for having given rise to serious human rights violations.
“Massive and systematic violations are already a State policy. The suspension of rights and militarization is no longer an exception but a rule that affects the lives of all Salvadorans,” says the NGO for the defense of human rights.
However, President Bukele disqualifies any criticism of his measure and calls this type of organization “defenders of gang members.” It is worth remembering that many of the 67,000 people captured since March of last year, when the president decreed the emergency regime, do not belong to gangs. To the less than 5 thousand have been released.
