Fourteen months after the entry into force of the state of exception to which Nayib Bukele called the “war against the mafias”, the President of El Salvador goes for more: a drastic cut that will reduce the number of mayoralties in the country by 83%, and will build a new mega jail. This was announced during the speech that began the fourth year of his term as head of the presidency of the Central American country.
At the same time that Bukele was speaking, the Attorney General’s Office was executing the order to search and execute all the properties of the former president Alfredo Cristiani, conservative who ruled the country between 1989 and 1994.
“Just as we deployed security forces and rounded up gang members until we put them in jail, so too we will go after white collar criminalswherever they come from ”, announced Bukele.
Cristiani has been accused of various crimes, from corruption to money laundering, and even an alleged involvement in the murder of Jesuit priests in 1989. He has never been prosecuted for any of the crimes with which he was accused.
The high point is that the human rights organizations and others associated with search for transparency in the exercise of power they fear that Bukele’s words (and actions) will be limited to a persecution of opponents to his government. In fact, his government officials have been accused of corruption and the president has been defending them systematically.
Human rights
More of 68,000 people have been detained so far in Salvadoran jails, accused of belonging to gangs or collaborating with them. A report that has just been presented by cristosalthe main organization in defense of human rights in The Saviorcollects testimonies from those who have been imprisoned in jails during the first year of the state of emergency and who were released after being declared innocent.
“The report on the first year of the emergency regime of Cristosal presents the first verified list of people who died in state custody and documents practices of torture inside penal centers”, summarizes the report. And it describes: “With the emergency regime, the Government affirmed that it was intended to stop an unprecedented wave of violence that had claimed the lives of 87 Salvadorans in 3 days. However, from the violent actions of the criminal groups that perpetrated these deaths, the State went on to violence against all kinds of people, especially the poorest. Without prior investigation, thousands of people who have been subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment were captured, in existing prisons or created to comply with the regime. In this way, the terror of the gangs was transformed into the systematic violence of the State”.
Lack of due process and investigations prior to arrests, illegal arrests and double jeopardy, illegal search of homes, arrests for anonymous complaints or for having a criminal record, stigmatization due to tattoos, lack of information to families about the place of confinement and family isolation, are hardly some of the behaviors recorded by the organization.
“Cristosal received 3,275 complaints during the first year of the regime, which is equivalent to 3,403 people whose human rights were violated. Of this total, the highest percentage are men (85.5%), followed by women (13.9%), and 55 people from the LGBTIQ+ community were counted. The main perpetrators are the National Civil Police (PNC) and the Armed Forces of El Salvador (FAES), who have not only carried out arbitrary arrests, but have also violated the relatives of those captured”.
Some of the testimonials are overwhelming. They describe double arrests (a sort of staging in which the detainee is told that he is going to be released and as soon as he reaches the entrance door of the prison he is arrested again), death announcements from inmates to relatives via funeral companies without any concrete proof of deathrecords of people who appear as detainees but who are actually missing.
“The application of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment have been a constant; these include beatings and ill-treatment, threats, and even electric shocks”, the report points out. And it includes the number of unexplained deaths during detention: 153 people who died in state custody.
Threats to journalists
On Tuesday the 6th, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, director of the Salvadoran police, reported that the journalists who investigated the secret negotiations between the government of the former president Mauricio Funes and the gangs in 2012. A pact called a “truce” with the gangs that controlled large territories, and that for a brief time helped reduce crime rates.
At the end of May, the Salvadoran justice system sentenced former President Funes to 14 years in prison for having negotiated that truce. Funes took refuge in Nicaragua, under the protection of Daniel Ortega.
Arriaza said in a television program that Salvadoran justice will take action against politicians and journalists that covered those negotiations. He did not give names, but he did imply that the government has a list.
With all this, the fact that the number of mayoralties is going to go from 262 to just 44 is just one more drop in the glass of an increasingly authoritarian regime that today, more than a “state of exception” shows signs of seeking to be a heavy-handed “state of consolidation” at its finest.
