Decreed in March 2022, after the escalation of homicides attributed to gangs, which in three days killed more than 80 people, El Salvador extends the state of emergency for another 30 days, for the 12th time.
El Salvador’s parliament extended for another 30 days the state of emergency, imposed in March 2022, as part of the “war” against organized crime groups declared by the president, Nayib Bukele.
The decision was approved on Wednesday night by 67 of the 84 deputies of the two chambers of the National Assembly of El Salvador, with seven abstentions and seven votes against, without any discussion in committee or debate in plenary.
“In a year, we saved the lives of some five thousand people and we had zero homicides for more than 320 days throughout the Bukele administration”, said the deputy Alexia Rivas, during a speech in plenary.
The “war against gangs that the Government has undertaken has allowed the people of El Salvador to have a sense of security, as the surveys show,” the legislative decree stressed.
According to a survey published this Tuesday by the local newspaper La Prensa Gráfica, Around 70% of the Salvadoran population supports the re-election of Nayib Bukele.
The state of emergency was imposed on March 27, 2022, following an escalation of homicides attributed to gangs, which killed more than 80 people in three days.
Parliament of El Salvador declares a state of emergency after 62 homicides in 24 hours
This is the 12th time that this exceptional regime has been prolonged, during or during which 66,000 people have been detained, without fundamental guarantees such as direct defense or the inviolability of telecommunications and with a maximum period of prolonged preventive detention of 72 hours for 15 days.
During the war against organized crime, Salvadoran organizations and the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office received more than 7,900 complaints of abuses, the majority related to arbitrary detentions.
At the end of last month, the Government of El Salvador inaugurated a maximum security prisonwith a capacity for 40,000 detainees, where it had initially transferred 2,000 alleged links to organized crime.
President of El Salvador opens jail for 40,000 inmates
Also on Wednesday, Nayib Bukele said on the social network Twitter that “the second group of 2,000 gang members has been transferred to the Center for the Repression of Terrorism.”
Source: Observadora
