Fateful weekend in terms of victims of violence: more than 50 people were killed by gangs, led by the President of El Salvador Naib Bukele with a request to declare a state of emergency on March 27, 2022. Two years later, crime is at a minimum, but human rights groups continue to question the impact of the measure.

Bukele insisted on his parliamentary majority to achieve the required exceptional measures, which were successively extended. Earlier this month, the Legislative Assembly approved the twenty-fourth extension, such that the regime will remain in force until at least mid-April, although there are no prospects of ending it in the short term.

This week, Bukele boasted of a four-way siege of areas involving 5,000 police and thousands of soldiers. after two murders in the northern zone. “We are not going to stop until we eradicate what little gangs are left,” he said on social media, regularly defending how El Salvador is now the “safest country” in Latin America.

Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro admitted in January that Between 18,000 and 20,000 gang members remain to be arrested. despite the fact that the number of arrests already exceeds 75 thousand. The government admits a certain margin of error in these mass arrests, which There will be from 6000 to 7000 of them. as Vice President Felix Ulloa once assessed.

Crime has decreased but the UN warned of excesses carried out by the political authorities and security forces of El Salvador. Last year, the UN human rights office warned that 1,600 of those detained were minors.

Until February, 327 cases of enforced disappearances were registered, more than 78,000 arbitrary arrests and at least 235 deaths in custody, According to estimates published by Amnesty International, the estimated number of people behind bars is 102,000. Prisons are at 148 percent capacity, despite the government building a mega-prison to relieve overcrowding.

Calls for restraint have been heard since Bukele’s re-election on February 4. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk called on the President of El Salvador to “respect the rule of law”“guarantee the separation of powers and promote a system of checks and balances” in his second term, which begins in June.

In response, Amnesty International’s Americas director, Ana Picker, warned in a statement that the lack of domestic counterbalance and the international community’s “timid response” to possible abuses had led to “the erroneous illusion that President Bukele has found a magic formula to solve very difficult problems, like violence and crime, but in a seemingly simple way.”

In fact, his message has spread to other regions of the Western Hemisphere, with several candidates promising in their campaigns: apply measures similar to Bukel’s in their countriese with a promise to reduce crime. Picker cautioned against these reports that “reducing gang violence by replacing it with state violence cannot be successful.”

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Head of Amnesty demanded “comprehensive policies that respect human rights” and “finding long-term solutions,” as anti-gang efforts could also increase the targeting of critical voices. He called on the international community to respond “strongly, clearly and decisively.”

(according to information from Europe Press)