Democracy is deteriorating rapidly in El Salvador.
Far from providing tools to protect citizens from violence, the state of emergency has represented a threat to everybody’s human rights. The government seems to be using it as an excuse to introduce unwarranted restrictions on human rights and civil liberties, to further its campaign to silence political opponents, civil society organizations, and independent media, taking over the judiciary, and seeking other self-serving purposes. The introduction of legal reforms such as those made to the Penal Code on April 5 to criminalize media or journalists who “reproduce and transmit messages from or presumably from gangs that could generate uneasiness or panic in the population” are a clear illustration of the lengths Bukele is prepared to go to in order to ensure nobody criticizes him.
Civil society organizations and independent media outlets have documented scores of human rights abuses involving the security forces and even the judiciary – evidence that the state of emergency poses a disproportionate threat to the protection and fulfillment of fundamental freedoms. For example:
Mass arrests and arbitrary detentions: Since the declaration of the state of emergency to April 27, at least 20,290 people have been arrested without any constitutional guarantees such as due process. People have been taken from their homes and off the streets without an arrest warrant and prevented from accessing legal defense.
Human rights violations: Police forces have carried out scores of arbitrary arrests, including of women and minors. Young people are being detained with no evidence of gang activity except the groundless assumption that having a decorative tattoo or the wrong kind of sneakers signifies gang membership. There have been short-term forced disappearances and at least two people have died in custody.
Abuses in prison: In detention, youths without gang affiliation are at risk of violence or being forced to join gangs by gang-affiliated detainees. Bukele has shown the tough conditions in Salvadoran prisons, including inmates sleeping on the floor in crowded cells and complaining about food rationing and a lack of sanitation.
Lack of transparency in public spending: Along with the extension of the state of emergency, the Legislative Assembly passed a reform that allows the government to evade legal processes that regulate public spending and contracts as long as the decree is in place. This measure is similar to a law that was approved in 2020 for pandemic spending that resulted in 66 percent of public spending being carried out with irregularities.
WOLA offers answers to these questions in our latest Q&A with Director for Central America Ana María Méndez Dardón & Central America Program Associate Julia Aikman Cifuentes.
