First modification:
The Government of El Salvador sent 10,000 soldiers and police on Saturday to cordon off a city on the outskirts of the capital in search of gang members and as part of the fifth stage of the Territorial Control Plan, PCT, called “extraction”, with which it tries to arrest every last gang member in the country.
A bad memory. At dawn this Saturday, the Government of Nayib Bukele began the fifth stage of its offensive to end the gangs that afflict the country and that began nine months ago by sending more than 10,000 soldiers and police to create a fence in Soyapango, a municipality located a just over 12 kilometers from San Salvador, the capital.
The armed operation, the largest on record in the fight against gangs by the Salvadoran authorities, seeks to “extract” all the members of the gangs that for years have extorted businesses and dominated many neighborhoods of the capital, San Salvador. .
The operation erupted in Soyapango – the second most populated city in the San Salvador Metropolitan Area and the third in the country – at dawn on Saturday, when troops blocked the roads that entered and left the municipality of Soyapango and special teams entered the town in search of suspected criminal gangs.
“From now on, the municipality of Soyapango is completely surrounded,” Bukele announced on his Twitter account, where he usually communicates his government’s actions.
Since the end of March, Bukele declared war on the gangs, which he calls “terrorists” and declared a state of emergency after a wave of homicides, an action criticized by human rights organizations that denounce the mass raids, stating that they often They detain young people because of how they look or where they live.
“There is no honest person who has been affected by the siege that has been established. The operation is directed directly against the gang members who are still hiding and who cause some inconvenience to the honest population (…) it is totally false that these operations are going to cause discomfort to the honest population,” said José Merino Monroy, Minister of Defense.
The minister pointed out that “the location of 12 gang members has been duly filed” and that the “work will continue until the last delinquent has been extracted from this municipality.”
Comasagua, the pilot of the arrests
Last October, President Bukele assured that the sieges or militarization of entire populations had worked in the city of Comasagua, when more than 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded and closed off the city to search for members of street gangs accused of murder.
The authorities used drones that flew over the city, and everyone entering or leaving it was questioned or searched. In two days, about 50 suspects were arrested.
“It worked,” Bukele said. According to the Government, homicides fell by 38% in the first ten months of the year compared to the same period in 2021 thanks to the military “siege”.
Bukele asked Congress to grant him extraordinary powers to declare a state of emergency, which has been renewed every month since March. The decree suspends some constitutional rights and gives police more powers to stop and hold suspects.
The state of emergency suspends the right of association, the right to be informed of the reason for an arrest, and access to a lawyer. It even gives the government power to intercept the calls and mail of anyone it considers suspicious. The time someone can be detained without charge has been extended from three to 15 days.
Something that for human rights activists is used to regularly detain young people just because of their age, their appearance or because they live in a neighborhood controlled by gangs.
There are some 70,000 gang members in El Salvador and for decades they have controlled swathes of territory and have extorted and killed with impunity. But the Bukele government wants to disappear from their tracks, even at the beginning of November it sent inmates to cemeteries to destroy the graves of gang members, prior to the day on which families usually visit the graves of their loved ones.
Citizens have documented the militarization of Supayango and many of them even compared the movements and military encirclements with the time of the Salvadoran civil war that lasted 12 years and left more than 75,000 dead and dozens missing.
“It was as if we were in the past, when the war began,” the citizens commented to the newspaper ‘ElSalvador.com’. “I felt fear when I saw this, especially when it happens at night,” they added.
Since the start of the Territorial Control Plan, the authorities have detained more than 56,000 people for alleged links to the gangs. Non-governmental organizations have recorded several thousand human rights violations and at least 80 deaths of people detained during the state of emergency.
With AP and EFE
#Bukele #militarizes #city #fight #gangs #revives #memories #war