More than a thousand gang members arrested for the second consecutive day in El Salvador

AI affirms that the Bukele Government has been “trampling the rights” of Salvadorans for 20 days

MADRID, 26 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The Salvadoran Police have arrested more than a thousand gang members for the second consecutive day, bringing the number of detainees since the state of emergency began in the Central American country to 18,315.

Specifically, according to police data released through the social network Twitter, the Salvadoran authorities have arrested a total of 1,172 “terrorists” throughout the country on Monday.

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has welcomed the data through the aforementioned social network and has guaranteed that the authorities will continue with the so-called “war against the gangs”.

The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved on Sunday the extension of the declared state of exception to combat gangs after a request by Bukele, so the measure will be in force for another 30 days.

During this period, the Salvadoran government is empowered to suspend certain freedoms and guarantees to facilitate the deployment of the military and police in the streets and in the municipalities where these homicides occurred.

The NGO Amnesty International (AI) lamented on Monday that, during the last 30 days, the Bukele government “has trampled on the rights of the Salvadoran population.”

AI’s director for the Americas, Erika Guevara Rosas, has indicated that “from legal reforms that violate international standards to arbitrary mass arrests and ill-treatment of detainees, the authorities in El Salvador have created the perfect storm of human rights violations. Human Rights which is now expected to continue with the approval of the extension of the state of emergency”.

“In El Salvador today, boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 16 can be sentenced to up to ten years in prison, people from marginalized communities can be arbitrarily detained without the right to legal defense, prisoners can be held without enough food and air, and journalists can be jailed just for reporting gang-related activity,” he added.

For this reason, Guevara Rosas has asked the Government “to cease its hostile attitude against civil society and the international community and to recognize the terrible effects of its policies on Human Rights.”

“We ask the international community to help prevent the incipient human rights crisis in El Salvador and the country’s authorities to stop committing abuses and ensure that independent investigations are carried out into the human rights violations that have already been committed.” , it is finished.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), among others, have also expressed concern about the imposition of a state of emergency in El Salvador, to which Bukele has responded that these organizations “defend gang members “. Meanwhile, the United Nations has also shown concern about the wave of homicides in the Central American country.