Bukele, ready to “ravage” gang members in El Salvador

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, said this Tuesday after the killing of an agent of the National Civil Police (PNC) that his government will “destroy” the gang members and that he will never “get out” of prison. “Let all non-governmental organizations know that we will wipe out these bloody murderers and their associates, we will put them in prison and they will never come out,” the president announced on Twitter.

This announcement came after the PNC reported the death of an agent in the northern department of Chalatenango, “who was attacked by gang members while on patrol with other police officers.”

“We do not care about your poor reports, nor about your prepaid journalists, nor about your puppet politicians, nor about your famous international community that has never cared about our people. We will heal our country and we will completely eliminate this scourge» added Bukele.

Congress, with a large pro-government majority, is preparing to vote on the fourteenth extension of the emergency regime that suspends constitutional guarantees, such as the right to defense.

Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro stated in a television interview that some 5,000 people arrested under the emergency regime with effect from March 2022, representing more than 7% of detentions, were released. Villatoro rejected observations by various humanitarian organizations about the detention of people who have no ties to gangs.

The humanitarian organizations of those Central American countries were registered at least until mid-March 5,082 “direct victims” of human rights violations, mainly due to arbitrary detentions, in the context of the state of emergency regime.

The government is framing its so-called “war on gangs” in this measure, which it credits with reducing murders to a rate of 7.8 per 100,000 population in 2022, although the figures have been questioned by the Human Rights Watch.