Nayib Bukele’s Fierce War Against Gangs in El Salvador: Arbitrary Arrests and Disappearances

The number of homicides has dropped significantly in El Salvador since the implementation a year ago of an emergency regime that involved bringing the army and police onto the streets and imprisoning suspected gang members en masse. But at the cost of suspending the constitutional guarantees, and multiplying the arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearancesaccording to reports that also suspect collusion between the government of President Nayib Bukele and criminal groups.

In March last year and after the assassination of 87 people at the hands of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, controlled by the ruling party, approved the first emergency regime at Bukele’s request which marked , according to local media, NGOs and the United States, the end of an alleged secret pact that the president had made with that organization dedicated to drug trafficking, extortion, arms smuggling, hit men and kidnappings.

The deal included financial benefits for MS13, reduced sentences, not extraditing them to the United States, and improvements in prison situations and communications to continue to control the organization in exchange for reducing the number of homicides.

This exceptional regime, which has already been extended 10 times, has resulted in the loss of constitutional guarantees for all citizens and the massive presence of military and police in the streets.

Since then, tens of thousands of people have been arrested without warrantwithout being informed of the reasons, and were left in solitary confinement and without the right to defense during the period of provisional arrest, which was changed from three to 15 days.

“What is known is what the government has published, namely that they are in solitary confinement” and that “they have been detained, under the emergency regime, more than 64,000 people, including 1,600 minors”specified in dialogue with Télam the director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for the Americas, Tamara Taraciuk.

But HRW and local NGO Cristosal could not provide data on how many of these people have been detained and remain in detention despite not having committed any crime before the police. Lack of transparency and official information.

Human rights violations​

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Both organizations say there have been massive arbitrary arrests and have documented cases of enforced disappearances, torture in detention and between 90 and 106 deaths in custody, a number that varies according to government and NGO claims.

“This is the universe we are talking about, there is no hard or clear data that establishes how many of these people have been arrested for being gang members and which are not. We have documented cases of individuals who have been arrested for their appearance physical, or because they had a tattoo or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” added Taraciuk.

Numerous testimonies collected by the Salvadoran media The lighthouse There is talk of arrests for having shown “nervousness” in interrogations, just as there are statements that give an account of a series of arrests or quotas that the uniformed officers had to respect, yes or yes.

“The relatives of the detainees pointed out that when they asked the police about the reasons for their capture, many of them said it was because they had a quota (to achieve), a goal,” said lawyer Abraham Ábrego, director of police. Télam Strategic Litigation of Cristosal, an organization dedicated to monitoring human rights violations.

“To achieve these goals, they initially resorted to lists of people with criminal records, including people who had already been convicted and served their sentences or were in rehabilitation programs, and caught them again,” Ábrego said, adding that police also used lists of “people they have profiled as gang members”.

However, many of these people who appeared on the lists have never been investigated, but their name has been included because it was mentioned, for example, during a police intervention.

And this happens in a context in which there are no independent institutions that can carry out criminal investigations and with a Legislative Assembly controlled by the ruling party, what has concentrated power to the point of changing the magistrates of the Constitutional Court in order to be able to advance in their reforms without any kind of brake.

“Bukele has launched an attack against democratic institutions, against the judiciary, against prosecutors, he took over the legislative branch and, in this context, it is very difficult for independent state institutions to be able to control what is happening,” Taraciuk listed. . .

Controversial and cinematic transfer

The centralization of power is such that the same government, without fear of condemnation, has spread numerous images of pavilions full of prisoners sitting on the floor, glued to each other, dressed only in inside of. , revealing tattoos identifying them as gang members.

Some images that, according to what Colombian President Gustavo Petro commented this week, are reminiscent of a “concentration camp”, but which internally helped Bukele to bring his positive image to almost 90%, paving the way for re-election in 2024.

“They are publicity tools that have their effects on popular support in certain sectors. That element of the use of force, even regardless of legal limits, is part of a strategy that is punitive populist management,” Ábrego said, in reference to a cinematic video released a week ago showing the transfer of 2,000 prisoners to a new prison designed as a place to house “terrorists”.

Regard a mega-prison with no courtyards, recreation areas or visitor spaces marital.

The shocking video was released hours after Washington released a formal indictment linking members of the Salvadoran government with MS13 leaders, who were allegedly offered prison benefits and not extradited to the United States for the change to reduce the homicide rate in the country.

“The images are a vivid reflection of Bukele’s punitive policy in terms of public safety and an attempt to control the narrative of what is happening in the country,” said the director of HRW, who stressed that the video, encrypted ” Hollywood”, what it does is cover the background of the negotiations with the gangs “which are far from being an effective security policy”.

“If what they want is to fight gang crime, what they need is social policies, education, integration, opportunities for young people, so that they have a different alternative to gangs and a criminal investigation policy with an independent judiciary,” he listed.

The truth is, falling crime rates, coupled with that punitive rhetoric, has it worked perfectly for the interests of Bukele, who hopes to renew his mandate smoothly, after amending the constitution to allow for re-election.

Furthermore, the “millennial president“The 41-year-old, as he is known, has a great reach among his constituents thanks to his handling of social networks and media, which make that narrative permeate society.

For HRW “it is worrying not only in El Salvador, but also at a regional level, where the Bukele model is being exported as a successful model in the fight against insecurity. in the long run they do not serve to combat the problems of precariousness”.

Source: EFE