What has happened in El Salvador after a year under the emergency regime?

First modification: 03/28/2023 – 01:21

After a year of emergency regime, El Salvador has not come out of its “war against gangs.”

The state of exception originally approved in late March 2022 and it was implemented by President Nayib Bukele to fight against gang violence in the country. It responded to an escalation of murders attributed to these criminal organizations that claimed the lives of 87 people in three days.

Since then, it has been renewed twelve times by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador —controlled by pro-government forces—, a number that contrasts with what is provided for in the country’s Constitution.

“The Constitution of the Republic establishes very clearly that the emergency regime can only be extended once, that is, for 30 days. However, today we celebrate one year of the exception regime. This implies a flagrant violation of the constitution” Zaira Navas, a security specialist and member of the NGO Cristosal, explained to France 24.

The state of exception suspends several constitutional guarantees: allows arbitrary arrests without a warrant, interrupts freedom of association, the right to legal defense and extends the period of administrative detention to 15 days (when it is normally 72 hours).

Under this special regime, the Government it brought thousands of soldiers and police onto the streets to carry out massive captures. He arrested more than 65,000 suspected gang members, according to official figures. Although multiple organizations estimate that thousands could be innocent.

In January alone, at least 3,000 people detained under the emergency regime were released for being “innocent,” according to Bukele.

The arrests have contributed to the return to calm in various regions of the country and were well received by the population.

“Today I am calm, when my son and daughter leave school and return home alone on public transport, without fear of being intercepted by bandits,” said Mauricio Reyes, a citizen of San Salvador, the country’s capital.

However, this sense of security has come at a high price: hand in hand with the state of emergency, a growing violation of human rights began to appear in the country.

Human rights violations in El Salvador

In 12 months of the state of emergency, thousands of cases of arbitrary arrests of people who simply had tattoos or who were present in areas where gang members usually operate have been reported. The detainees have not had access to any trial or judicial defense.

According to the expert, the state of emergency “has become a measure that permanently violates the rights of the population, which has detained thousands of people without trial. Of these 65,000 people that the government announces that it has detained, none of them have been brought to trial.”

According to International Amnestywere reported “ill-treatment inflicted on persons detained by the security forces” such as “the limitation of food and access to the open air for the imprisoned people”. Multiple cases of torture have also been reported and several people have died in custody, a matter of great concern to the organization.

Finally, the number of detainees greatly exceeds the capacity of the prisons, leading the incarcerated to live in overcrowded cells. To deal with this problem, Bukele had the largest prison in the American continent built, which can accommodate up to 40,000 detainees. Thousands of them have already been transferred to the new prison.

A risk of renewed violence

Due to the detention conditions of these prisoners and the lack of justice, various experts explain that gang networks are not being dismantled in prisons. On the contrary, cs Navas points out, these mass arrests could lead to a resurgence of violence in the future.

“When these people leave, people who have been tortured, abused, unjustly detained —because at some point they have to leave— these people will not come out educated, as established by criminal law in the country (…) there will be more possibilities that these people acquire criminal habits in the conditions in which they find themselves”, comments the expert.

In recent years, El Salvador’s exceptionally high crime rate has dropped for a number of reasons. In 2018, the crime rate was 50.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, while the authorities expect it to drop to 2 per 100,000 this year. Although the mass incarceration of gang members was part of the improvement in security, this figure had already begun to drop long before the declaration of the state of emergency. Local media, like ‘The lighthouse‘, They point out that the drop is explained by an alleged agreement that Bukele would have made with the gangs. The pact would have been broken after mass murders were committed a year ago.

International organizations warn about the negotiations that took place secretly between the gangs and the Government.

“The eastern New York prosecutor has prosecuted several members of the MS (Salvatrucha) gang hierarchy and has clearly mentioned that this (the improvement of security) has been possible through a negotiation between the government and this criminal structure. “.

Despite this, the popularity of the president continues to grow in his country. In January 2023, the president’s approval rating was over 90%. These figures can be explained by the historical rejection of the population towards these extremely violent groups that have caused thousands of murders over the last three decades.

With AFP and local media