The deputies who answer to the president renewed for another month the exception regime that suspended several constitutional guarantees
By
Héctor Silva Ávalos
Dozens of people await information about relatives detained in a Salvadoran prison. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
To make a chronicle of the exceptional regime in which Nayib Bukele has kept El Salvador since March goes through listing dozens of human rights abuses of its governed, from the complaint that 18 people have died after being deprived of liberty /b>even those that speak of hundreds of suspects, up to 600, gathered in expedited hearings without the presence of their defenders.
The Bukele government insists that, with the suspension of the constitutional guarantees endorsed by this special regime, it has managed to control the violence that caused 87 deaths in 72 hours at the end of March. Even so, the bukelista deputies approved on Wednesday, May 26, a second extension that maintains the possibility of the police making mass arrests, that the period of detention prior to a judicial hearing be up to fifteen days, that the rights of defense of detainees be more flexible, that the relatives of provisional prisoners spend weeks without hearing from their relatives and that the police and the intervene in homes without court orders.
Among the most serious effects of the emergency regime, according to complaints received by Cristosal, one of the organizations that has closely followed it and documented, are the executions of at least 18 Salvadorans while they were in the custody of state agents.
“It’s a ticking time bomb. We already have documented 18 cases of people who have been executed under the responsibility of the State, either at the time of arrest, when they are inside a prison or when they leave the prison. We have no precedent for situations similar to this”, says Zaira Navas, legal and security chief of the non-governmental Cristosal.
The Head of the Salvadoran Penal System and Vice Minister of Justice and Security Pública, Osiris Luna Meza, speaks during the inauguration of the new cell area called Mariona 2 at La Esperanza prison in Ayutuxtepeque, El Salvador December 6, 2021 REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
Last week, Cristosal presented a report that also shows that during the first two months of the emergency regime, a consortium made up of four NGOs and a university, the Central American University, received 555 complaints of human rights violations. , most related to arbitrary arrests.
According to Navas, the government has imposed daily capture quotas on National Civil Police (PNC) agents, which has increased abuses. “The exceptional regime has lent itself to many arbitrariness as State policy, which is what has happened when ordering arrests to meet numbers or quotas of detainees: at the beginning there were a thousand, today there are 500 every day, and there are many audio and police recordings that prove it. They are taking advantage of the arbitrariness of the regime to commit more arbitrariness”, he said in a chat with Infobae.
Already at the beginning of May, from the United States, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) warned that the Salvadoran emergency regime had brought with it violations that can be attributed to the Salvadoran State and that include arbitrary detentions, abuses in prison and excessive use of police force. In a statement published on May 6, WOLA spoke of reports of two deaths of people at the hands of state agents.
David Morales, director of Human Rights of Cristosal, assured that they have no news that autopsies have been carried out on the 16 people who, according to the complaints, have been executed during the emergency regime. That, he says, may indicate that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is trying to hide these deaths . The FGR, led by a lawyer loyal to Bukele, has remained silent on the issue.
“A humanitarian crisis is developing”
Zaira Navas is a lawyer who has extensive experience investigating abuses by the Salvadoran police. Between 2009 and 2010, she was appointed inspector general of the PNC and she opened files on two dozen high-ranking officers on suspicion that they had participated in drug trafficking, sexual harassment and extrajudicial executions, among others. They were unprecedented investigations at the time, which in the end were aborted by the authorities on duty, leaving several officers unpunished, including some who still hold positions of power, such as the current deputy director of the PNC, appointed by the government. by Bukele.
As the legal and security chief of Cristosal, Navas has accompanied investigations and complaints about the abuses attributed to the State since the Legislative Assembly, dominated by deputies loyal to Bukele, approved the emergency regime. One of the data that these investigations highlight is that most of the complaints are attributed, precisely, to the PNC. In a chat with Infobae, Navas detailed the abuses committed by the security forces and the government protected by the suspension of constitutional guarantees.
Detained in a police jail awaiting transfer to a penal center in El Salvador. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
“The most serious aspect of the emergency regime is these fifteen days that enable, and this is how the Police and the Prosecutor’s Office have interpreted it, so that they can make mass arrests without further evidence or without individualizing the criminal participation of a person, and as already We know that for a person to have criminal responsibility, it is necessary to establish individual responsibility in the criminal act and what the crime has been committed. That’s not happening,” he details.
It also denounces that the Prosecutor’s Office is forcing judges to hold massive hearings in which it is impossible to guarantee the right to defense of detainees.
“The prosecution is presenting the accusation one or two days before in hearings where between 100 and 600 people attend. The hearings take place without compliance with the rules of due process. Despite the fact that the defendants are present through electronic communication from the different penal centers, the majority have public defenders, because the majority are people with limited resources, “says Navas, who finishes off the argument with a revealing calculation: the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (PGR), in charge of public defense, has 263 lawyers to serve the 32,529 people detained between the end of March and mid-May; this means that each lawyer has to ensure the defense of some 120 detainees.
Navas warns that the situation will not improve when the emergency regime is lifted, which with the recent extension will last until June 25, since the Legislature controlled by Bukele, using the rise in gang violence as an argument, had also approved several legal reforms that will restrict civil liberties permanently.
The reforms, he explains, empower judges to exclude alternative measures to the arrest of people accused of terrorism, which is the case of those suspected of being gang members due to a resolution of the Supreme Court of Justice that gives the label of terrorist organizations to the MS13 and Barrio 18.
The criminal reform also eliminates the limit of provisional detention, which was previously two years, which opens the door for a person to be detained indefinitely. “This widely violates the guarantees of presumption of innocence, of the right to defense, to be judged by the natural judge, judicial independence, the principle of legality, that of equality, among other constitutional guarantees”, Navas lists.
The lawyer agrees with those who understand that These measures and the exceptional regime are largely propaganda and little efficient public policy. In her analysis, Navas questions the real efficiency of these measures in combating gangs:
“The hundreds and thousands of people they have detained who do not have these characteristics (of belonging to gangs) become arbitrary detentions. This is generating a humanitarian crisis for the families who have been victims. And the government is not giving alternatives to the extreme poverty that exists in these families and that -due to arbitrary detentions- have been left without the person who provides, those who had formal and informal jobs, ”he says. And he wonders: “As for the people that the government had already profiled for belonging to gangs, the question that arises is why it didn’t capture them before. All this leads us to presume that this information about a pact between the government and the gangs has some substance.”
A popular measure?
Since the night of Tuesday, May 24, several pro-government deputies had rushed to their Twitter accounts to say that they were ready to approve a new extension to the emergency regime. They listed government figures on the decline in violence rates and resorted to one of their favorite arguments: “We do what the majority orders,” as Christian Guevara, head of the ruling caucus, tweeted.
The same day that the extension was approved, the Central American University (UCA) published a survey in which it explored popular acceptance of the exception regime. The result is mixed and supports multiple readings.
The Nayib Bukele government is accused of committing violations of Human Rights during an exceptional regime approved in March, including the extrajudicial executions of 16 people. EFE/Rodrigo Sura
In general, 6 out of 10 Salvadorans think that the measures have helped the government improve security in territories dominated by gangs and almost 80% think that crime has decreased; this last percentage drops to 53% when the question is, specifically, if crime has decreased in the place where the respondents live.
But. The survey also reveals that nearly 40% do not know what legal guarantees are suspended and more than half believe that the government should seek alternative measures to the exception regime. 48% also do not agree that the Police make arrests without a court order.
In an editorial, the UCA assures that “there are nuances that object to a Manichaean reading and simplistic perception of the population” on the exception regime. That which “the majority orders”, according to the ruling deputy Guevara, is not so clear.
What was left in no doubt is the intention of the Nayib Bukele government to continue to the country under the regime of restriction of legal guarantees for citizens to continue his so-called war against the gangs, with whom he agreed in exchange for governability and electoral deals, as multiple journalistic investigations have revealed and criminal investigations in El Salvador and the United States. So far, that regime has already claimed the lives of 16 people and the arbitrary arrests of thousands more.