Political violence erupts in San Salvador

Political violence erupted in El Salvador tonight in a manner not seen in decades.    As the FMLN was concluding a rally in San Salvador to kick off the campaign for its mayoral candidate Rogelio Canales, a suspect pulled up in a blue car and began shooting.   Two people were killed and five wounded in the shooting which occurred in the charged atmosphere leading up to El Salvador's national elections four weeks from today.  As of late Sunday, three suspects had reportedly been arrested.

Images circulated on twitter of the blood spattered bed of a truck which had been participating transporting rally participants.

It's lamentable that in our country, one more time, we kill each other over political differences.  All ought to be responsible with their words and actions.   Democracy, earned after shedding so much blood of our sisters and brothers, can't give way to hate.   -- Miguel Pereira, FMLN mayor of San Miguel

 

Many were outraged when the first reaction by President Nayib Bukele was this tweet:

It appears that the moribund parties have put in motion their ultimate plan. What desperation to not lose their privileges and corruption. I thought they could not fall lower, but they fell.

It's incredible how little value they put on human life -- the most precious good we have in this world.  This government has fought to defend life but it seems that there are those who want to cling to the past of death.  Our people no longer want to suffer.

The PNC is already searching for those responsible and all the weight of the law will fall upon them.

Apparently Bukele was trying to claim this was a type of "false flag" event, instituted by his political opponents, to try and blame him and his political party????

The killings were condemned by the El Salvador's Human Rights Ombudsman (PDDH) who also called for the attorney general's office and the police to make a diligent investigation using all the technological tools available in the city: 

Attorney General Raul Melara tweeted:

An attack against supporters of a political party has happened and left two dead and 5 wounded as a result.

This is grave; the election contest cannot be converted into a blood bath.

We are investigating already, and we will will process those responsible.

Melara also announced that he was summoning the secretary generals of each of the political parties to meet with him Monday morning.

The FMLN held a press conference at 9 this evening where Oscar Ortiz, secretary general of the FMLN spoke.   Ortiz called the attack on the FMLN rally an assault against El Salvador and against democracy.   He put the blame squarely on president Bukele for inciting an atmosphere of hatred.   When asked about the president's tweet, Ortiz replied that he "wanted to vomit."

Reacting to the shooting, Jorge Cuellar, a Salvadoran scholar and lecturer at Dartmouth, wrote on Twitter:

Bukele’s inflammatory rhetoric has now turned into physical violence, a drive-by, against an opposition party campaign launch event. Senseless—and a direct consequence of Bukele’s ceaseless fearmongering.  This is the consequence of the political rage that Bukele has harnessed, encouraged, and now prompted followers to act on. Bukele must be held responsible for this act of direct violence against another political party.  It’s as if his military populism, his ongoing hate rhetoric for the political opposition, and the cult of personality he’s cultivated was something he could manage and contain to the realm of political discourse...

Since December, Nayib Bukele has been publicly denigrating the 1992 Peace Accords which ended the country's bloody civil war.   One of the major achievements of those accords had been the virtual elimination of political violence in El Salvador for the past two decades.   El Salvador now faces peril that the abusive attack language used by the president and his allies on social media may be inciting a kind of violence many prayed would not be seen again.