Photo: SALVADOR MELENDEZ/AP/DPA/PICTURE ALLIANCE / Deutsche Welle
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, promulgated this Sunday ( 24.03.2022), with the endorsement of Parliament, an exceptional regime, restricting civil liberties and expanding powers of the Police, when the country faces a rise in gang violence that has left 76 homicides in two days.
Armed with assault rifles and bulletproof vests, police and soldiers patrolled the streets, while the arrest of leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-) accused of ordering the crimes. The Government attributes to the gangs of MS- and Neighborhood 18 have unleashed a “wave of violence” in the country. “Almost 600 captured in just two days,” Bukele said Sunday night, via Twitter.
“Gang members have to go to the cemetery, jail or bed a hospital. The State respects itself!”, the Minister of Justice, Gustavo Villatoro, stated on the same social network.
The ruler clarified that “for the vast majority of people life continues normal”, although there will be “focused and temporary closures” in some zones. Religious services, sporting events and commerce can be carried out normally, he indicated via Twitter.
Bukele also ordered a “maximum emergency” to be decreed in all prisons, where more than 03.000 of the 70. members of the gangs MS-17 and Barrio 18, among others, who live in El Salvador. “All cells closed 18/7, no one goes out or to the patio,” wrote the president and added a “message to the gangs: for your actions, now your “homeboys they won’t even be able to see a ray of sun”.
The president also assured that he will ration his food in prison. “If the ‘international community’ is worried about their little angels, come and bring them food, because I will not take away the budget in schools to feed these terrorists”, he sentenced.
“It is urgent that the Government protect the population with sustainable and respectful measures of DDHH (Human Rights). The security policy must always be within the rule of law”, reacted Juan Pappier, from the Americas Division of the NGO Human Rights Watch.
Bukele -a millennial of 40 enjoying broad popular support for years since he came to power in June 2019- made security an axis of his campaign and highlighted at the beginning of his mandate the improvement in the indicators on homicides. However, in December 2021, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned two government officials for allegedly negotiating with gangs to get them to support the party of Bukele, New Ideas, in the legislative elections of 2021. According to the accusation, in exchange, the gangs obtained money from the Government and privileges for their imprisoned bosses, which Bukele dismisses as a “lie”.
The president he is pointed out by his opponents for having “authoritarian” attitudes. Washington has reproached him for not respecting the separation of powers, having dismissed, with the help of Parliament, magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and the attorney general. loves (afp, reuters)