El Salvador extends emergency powers in year-long gang crackdown
Al JazeeraAUG 2023
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.
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.