Inmates identified by authorities as gang members sit on the floor of the Tecoluca Terrorism Detention Center prison.
The measure that tries to curb the crime unleashed by the gangs was approved without debate or study by the pro-government majority in parliament.
The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, with a large pro-government majority, approved on Wednesday night (03.15.2023) the twelfth extension of an emergency regime, with which the country will surpass the year with this measure requested by the government of Nayib Bukele and with which a “war on gangs” has been declared.
The emergency regime, which suspends constitutional guarantees, was originally approved at the end of March 2022 after an escalation of murders attributed to gangs, which claimed the lives of more than 80 people in three days.
The request for expansion was presented by the Minister of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, and was approved by legislators from the ruling Nuevas Ideas (NI) party and its allies with 67 votes out of 84 deputies.
The extension of the measure, which the Bukele government calls a “war against gangs,” was approved without study or legislative debate.
The suspended constitutional guarantees are the right to defense of detainees, the inviolability of telecommunications and the maximum period of provisional detention of 72 hours.
They transfer 2,000 gang members to a mega-prison
Before the approval, President Bukele announced on Twitter the transfer of 2,000 gang members to a new maximum-security prison, bringing a total of 4,000 inmates in the compound that, according to the president, is the “largest in all of America.”
“This day, in a new operation, we transferred the second group of 2,000 gang members to the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot),” the president posted on Twitter.
According to official figures, there are about 66,000 people arrested, whom the government accuses of being gang members, and some 3,300 have been released on parole.
Salvadoran humanitarian organizations and the Office for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH) have received more than 7,900 complaints of abuses, most of them arbitrary arrests.
The authorities attribute the drop in homicides to this measure and the Territorial Control Plan, which according to official accounts were 496 in 2022, 57% less than in 2021.
Half of the Salvadoran population considers that the emergency regime “will not solve the problem” of gangs in El Salvador, although 75.9% of citizens approve of the measure, according to a survey by the University Institute of Public Opinion (Iudop). from the Central American University (UCA) released in October 2022.
jc (efe, afp)