The IACHR Condemned the Increase in Violent Deaths in El Salvador

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Thursday urged the government of El Salvador to respect due process and human rights during the state of emergency declared last month following an increase in gang killings.

In a press release, the IACHR reiterated its condemnation of the increase in violent deaths in El Salvador, expressed its solidarity with the affected families, and recalled that victims must obtain justice and reparation.

After registering 62 homicides on March 26, a figure that had not been seen in years in El Salvador, Congress approved the state of emergency that limits freedom of association, suspending a person's right to be duly informed of his rights and reasons for arrest and the assistance of a lawyer.

Since then, more than 14,000 people have been arrested.

Faced with the suspension of guarantees, the IACHR stated that, although the Salvadoran State has the right and obligation to guarantee security and maintain public order, “its power is not unlimited, since it has the duty, at all times, to apply procedures in accordance with the current legislation and respect the fundamental rights of all person under its jurisdiction”.

In August 2015, the Supreme Court classified the gang members and their collaborators, apologists and financiers as terrorists, allowing them to be prosecuted under the figure that imposed sentences of six to nine years in prison.

But with the reform of the Congressional Penal Code, gangs are now considered criminally unlawful and their members can be sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison, while for leaders the sentence rises to between 40 and 45 years in prison.

Any person or media that reproduces and transmits messages originated by gangs is also punishable by 10 to 15 years. It is not clear, however, who will determine whether content should be penalized or who will be in charge of detecting a message that violates the law.

To combat the escalation of gang criminal violence, heavily armed police and military units broke into populous communities with the presence of these criminal structures. They also encircled the areas with barbed wire and searched who enters or leaves, demanding identification and checking their belongings.

According to the IACHR, during police and soldier operations, human rights organizations and the press denounced that “many of the arrests were carried out illegally, arbitrarily and through the use of violence.”

He added that the captures were based on subjective perceptions, “about belonging to criminal groups due to factors such as physical appearance, age, area where they live.”

It also stated that the suspension of certain judicial guarantees has prevented the knowledge of the reasons for the deprivation of liberty, as well as access to legal assistance and contact with family members.

The IACHR criticized the fact that El Salvador has amended the Criminal Code for crimes related to organized crime, which includes gangs, and that it applies 20 years of imprisonment to adolescents over 16 years of age and up to 10 years to older than 12 years.

The agency also called on the Salvadoran State to investigate those responsible for human rights violations and adopt a comprehensive security policy that has as its premise the protection of these rights.

For his part, the Attorney General of the Republic, Rodolfo Delgado, justified declaring the emergency regime “because there were conditions that were not normal in our country in terms of security, there was an increase in homicides, it reached 62 in one day”.

In a talk show with local Canal 10, Delgado also confirmed that as of Monday, 14,571 arrests of suspected gang members or collaborators of these criminal structures had been taken. The courts of law have already ordered the pre-trial detention of 5,901 accused.

The so-called gangs or gangs, which have a presence in populous neighborhoods of the country, are involved in drug trafficking and organized crime, but they also extort money from merchants and transport companies and murder those who refuse to pay, according to the authorities.

In 2012, the U.S. government included Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) on its list of international criminal organizations.

(With information from AP)

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