El Salvador extends emergency powers in year-long gang crackdown
Al JazeeraDec 01, 2022
Amnesty: El Salvador Committing Human Rights Abuses in Gang Purge
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Image copyright: Reuters [via BBC]
The Facts
Amnesty International on Monday published a new report alleging that El Salvador's authorities have committed systematic human rights abuses since a state of emergency was declared last year.
The rights group alleged that the year-long war against gangs has resulted in more than 66K arbitrary detentions, as well as enforced disappearances, torture, and the deaths of at least 132 citizens in state custody.
The Spin
Narrative A
The war on gangs has produced an extraordinary change in El Salvador, which recently celebrated a 300-day streak without a single homicide. The emergency decree has reduced violence and proved popular in a country that, over three days in March 2022, reported the violent deaths of 88 people. The state of emergency hasn't violated human rights or suspended public liberties — it has only imprisoned terrorists and reduced high crime rates, making the country safer.
Narrative B
Amnesty's findings and demands chime with evidence of mass human rights abuses revealed through the leak of a government database, including the unlawful detention of children and mass arrests without investigation. Impoverished Salvadorans are being criminalized, rounded up, and wrongfully imprisoned despite the absence of any affiliation with gangs. The current state of emergency is eroding democracy and civil rights in El Salvador, and is being used to further the government's campaign of silencing opponents and independent media.
