El Salvador: Statement at the US House Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
December 21, 2023 12:42PM EST
I am honored to appear before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
Organized crime and gangs have a dramatic impact on human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean. The United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) reports that the Americas has the highest homicide rate in the world, with 15 homicides per 100,000 people in 2021, and approximately 50 percent of those homicides are linked to organized crime and gangs.
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Gangs, including MS-13 and Barrio 18, have for decades tormented communities in El Salvador, using brutal violence, including killings and rape, to extort people and gain control over the territory. The response by past governments typically oscillated between two failed strategies: secret pacts with gangs and iron fist security policies that led to rights violations and new cycles of violence.
President Nayib Bukele has combined both measures. As the US Department of Justice has determined, his government entered into off-the-books arrangements with gangs, offering MS-13 gang leaders’ prison and judicial benefits, including protection from extradition to the United States, in exchange for a decrease in the homicide rate and electoral support.
But after a wave of murders in March 2022, the government announced a “war against gangs,” and the Legislative Assembly, controlled by President Bukele’s allies, declared a state of emergency suspending some constitutional rights. Twenty-one months later, the state of emergency remains in force. Since it was first established, police and soldiers have arrestedmore than 73,000 people—roughly 1.6 per cent of the country’s population. These include at least 2,800 children under age 18.
The Legislative Assembly has also approved a series of measures proposed by President Bukele to address gang violence that allow judges to imprison children as young as 12, and dangerously expand the use of pretrial detention and counterterrorism legislation. More recently, in July, it passed a law that, according to the Minister of Justice and lawmakers, would allow courts to try up to 900 people jointly without presenting individual evidence against each of them.
More:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/21/el-salvador-statement-us-house-tom-lantos-human-rights-commission