El Salvador declares state of emergency (again)
On January 29, 2025, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed a resolution extending for the 35th time the State of Exception under which the country's residents have lived since March 27, 2022. There was no debate. There was no evidence presented of the emergency circumstances required by the Salvadoran constitution to justify the suspension of rights to due process in the criminal justice system and warrantless interception of communications. Where would such evidence come from today in the country that Nayib Bukele proclaims the safest in the western hemisphere?
In the almost three years of the State of Exception, the government says it has arrested more than 85,000 persons and put them in the country's prison system, imprisoning 1.8% of the country's population. As of the fall 2024, 12,900 of the country's prison population are women.
The online periodical Focos notes that the high level of incarceration does not bother Bukele:
For Nayib Bukele, these figures are a source of pride. When asked whether more than 1% of the population is behind bars, he responds: “We did not imprison 1% of the population, we freed 99%,” said Bukele in a speech he gave when visiting a prison in Costa Rica in November 2024....
“Obviously, the operations are not perfect and, without any intention of harming an innocent person, some were captured in the same way as they are in France, in Germany, in Japan and in all the countries of the world. We are freeing them. We have already freed 8,000 people and we are going to free 100% of the innocent people,” added Bukele.
As a side note, the suggestion that people are being "freed" is misleading. I have spoken to several persons wrongly detained and subsequently released, and have read many other reports. The vast majority are still being charged with somehow being criminals and have the possibility of prison hanging over their heads. The government does not acknowledge in any individual case that it arrested an innocent person, it just stops imprisoning them before some unscheduled future trial date.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) commented on the president's number of 8000 freed:
The release of these people is difficult to corroborate because the lack of transparency, reliable data and access to information is a serious problem. The state security forces, the prosecutor’s office, and the judiciary, act without any control or counterweight, with confidentiality being the rule. On the one hand, the recognition made by President Bukele should be subject to international scrutiny, including crimes under international criminal law, since there is an explicit acceptance of violations to human rights, access to justice, and due process. On the other hand, the documentation work of human rights organizations and complaints from many relatives of those detained indicate that there are probably many other innocent people who have been detained under the state of emergency.
Although Bukele seems to be admitting that up to 10% of the persons jailed, often for month or years, were wrongly detained, human rights investigators believe the number may be closer to 40%.
The group Socorro Juridico says that it has identified 366 prisoners who have died during the State of Exception. According their investigations, 40% died as a result of acts of violence and 30% through medical neglect. The group worries the actual number of deaths could be much higher.
In December 2024, Amnesty International wrote about the conditions in prisons under the State of Exception:
[There is] a crisis of extreme overcrowding in most penitentiary centres, some of which, according to civil society organisations, have been running at over 300% capacity since the state of emergency was instituted. Victims have described conditions as “hellish”, characterised by a lack of medical care, substandard basic services such as food and water, and the cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment frequently meted out, including torture. According to local organisations, more than 300 deaths under state custody have been recorded. Amnesty International has documented cases of deaths due to beatings, torture and a lack of proper medical care.
The impacts recorded in this study showed psychological effects such as anxiety, sleep problems, sadness and depression, unfocused grief, as well as avoiding places that generate fear due to the presence of the police or military. This study also identified abandoned children, who do not have adult relatives to care for them, and who, due to the social stigma of the arrest of someone in their family, receive very little or no support for their subsistence, with the community itself seeking to accompany and provide food or money, even out of fear of being unjustly arrested just for helping them. In certain cases, children have been identified as victims of sexual exploitation, particularly girls and adolescents.
The United Nations heard in January from human rights groups, member nations, and UN bodies about the State of Exception and other human rights issues as part of its Universal Periodic Review for El Salvador. The Universal Periodic Review is a mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls for each UN Member State to undergo a peer review of its human rights records every 4.5 years. The entire submission of the government of El Salvador has only a one sentence mention of the State of Exception, attributing a reduction in homicides to its adoption.
A United Nations body has also agreed to look at four exemplar cases of arbitrary detentions during the State of Exception.
While the US government has been silent about human rights abuses under the State of Exception, and nothing should be expected from the Trump administration, Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin and Tim Kaine, issued a statement in November 2024 which reads in part:
For 32 months, tens of thousands of Salvadorans have been arbitrarily arrested without due process – presumed guilty, crammed into overpopulated prisons, and unaware of the charges against them....The Bukele administration must restore constitutional order for the Salvadoran people, immediately end its practice of mass trials, grant detainees access to family and legal counsel, and provide reintegration support for those innocent Salvadorans unjustly swept up in this crackdown
Comments