San Salvador (EFE)
On March 27, El Salvador completed one year with an exception regime that establishes the suspension of constitutional guarantees, such as the defense of detainees and the inviolability of telecommunications, with more than 66,417 arrests.
The Bukele government attributes the decrease in homicides to the emergency regime and the Territorial Control Plan, which at the end of 2022 was 496 deaths.
“We will continue working for the safety of Salvadorans, even if the ‘human rights’ NGOs claim,” Bukele posted on Twitter on Tuesday.
He stressed that “on the anniversary of the approval of the Exception Regime, we closed the day with 0 homicides.”
El Salvador registered 496 homicides in 2022, approximately 57% less than those recorded in 2021, according to an official source.
The 2022 homicide number is the lowest since 2019, the year in which Bukele became President. In 2019 there were more than 2,390 deaths and in 2020 the number was more than 1,340 murders, mainly attributed to gang members.
The Central American country came to register rates of 103 and 36 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants between 2015 and 2019, most of the deaths attributed to gangs.
NGOs register more than 5,000 “direct victims”
Humanitarian organizations in El Salvador registered until mid-March at least 5,082 “direct victims” of human rights violations, mainly due to arbitrary detentions, in the context of an emergency regime that is implemented in the country to “combat” gangs, according to a report presented this Monday.
El Salvador celebrates this March 27 one year with the suspension of constitutional guarantees, such as the defense of detainees and the inviolability of telecommunications, with more than 66,417 arrests.
There are seven organizations that have received a total of 4,723 cases of complaints of human rights violations, which affect 5,082 people.