"There is enough evidence for El Salvador to be tried for crimes against humanity"

[Judi Lynn]

Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Julia Gavarrete
Leer en español

Zaira Navas leads a team that has interviewed hundreds of detainees under the government’s “state of exception” who suffered grave human rights violations during the months they spent in prison. In addition to speaking with them, Navas and her team at the law and security program of human rights organization Cristosal interviewed family members, specialists, doctors, and mortuary employees who handled the bodies of people who died in custody.

A new report from Cristosal, based in part on these testimonies, provides compelling evidence that the government of El Salvador has committed major crimes of state including, Navas says, crimes against humanity.

The Salvadoran government claims to have arrested and imprisoned more than 68,000 people during the first year of the state of exception, which went into force in late March 2022, and has been renewed every month since then. In that time, Cristosal has received 3,275 reports of human rights violations, the vast majority filed by women — the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the detained. According to Navas, who served as Inspector General for El Salvador’s National Civil Police 11 years ago, most of those arrested under the state of exception are not actually gang members, as the government claims. As of late May 2023, Navas says, at least 160 people are known to have died in prison.

“We found that the majority [of those who died in custody] showed signs of being beaten: in the head, in the stomach, in the back, in the legs,” she told El Faro English in this interview. Her team, she adds, has documented evidence of strangulation or asphyxiation, burns, fractures, and lacerations on the bodies of the deceased.

The report describes cases of extreme torture and abuse in prison: One man suffered electric shocks while being forced to kneel on gravel to the point that he began bleeding. Another suffered a stroke after he was held in solitary confinement, given only one meal a day, and subjected to routine beatings. In another case, around 145 people confined to one cell were forced to share a single glass for water, and to eat off of the floor — abuses also documented by El Faro.

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202306/el_salvador/26881/there-is-enough-evidence-for-el-salvador-to-be-tried-for-crimes-against-humanity

[Mike_in_LA]

1. I was in San Salvador in April

The first day I was there, I walked 12 miles. Just wherever. Didn't matter. I was safe. Unbothered. Wherever I wanted to walk, I walked.

And when I took an Uber or a taxi or when I sat at a restaurant or when I talked to shopkeepers, they were so happy and prideful in what the arrests meant for their country.

MS-13 is insane as an organization. Bukele has done some weird shit but not this.

El Salvador is a beautiful country, but virtually no one knows that because it's never been safe.

It is now.

On this front, they did a GREAT thing.