It highlights the arbitrary government arrests in the pandemic and exposing citizens to contagion in places of containment. The report also notes Bukele’s discredits against journalists and organizations holding him accountable for the use of funds.
Human rights violations in El Salvador have been portrayed in Amnesty International’s 2020-2021 report by collecting not only the arbitrary detention of hundreds of citizens and confining them to places with precarious health conditions, but also by attacks on already journalistic organizations, as well as the debt with reparation to the victims of the conflict by Nayib Bukele’s government.
Violation of the right to health is the first on the list of allegations in the Bukele administration. In the report, Amnesty International (AI) highlights the arbitrary detentions and confinement of more than 2,000 people who were exposed to potential contagion because the centers in which they were forced to serve their quarantine did not meet adequate health conditions.
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Every year, this international organization, made up of 10 million people, monitors the human rights situation in independent countries and is subject to accountability, the report details.
“The centers (containment or confinement) did not comply with international standards of sanitary conditions and physical distancing, or that exposed people interned in them to an unnecessary risk of COVID-19 infection,” the report says.
As for arbitrary detentions, AI says detainees for alleged non-compliance with the mandatory quarantine measure in their homes, “were taken to detention centers or police stations as if they had committed a crime.”
On March 21, 2020, Executive Decree No. 12 came into force, entitled “Extraordinary Prevention and Containment Measures to Declare the National Territory as an Area Subject to Sanitary Control, in order to Contain the COVID-19 Pandemic”. This meant that the government imposed a series of restrictive measures, including closing borders, stopping economic activity and locking citizens in their homes, only one family member was allowed to go out to buy food, medicine. or for some health emergency.
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The government was clear: the decree stated that staying at home was law, except in an emergency or need to provide food. Whoever did not abide by the restrictions, the decree said, and did not justify why he walked the streets, incurred “relevant criminal and civil responsibilities.”
Lawyers and some organizations questioned whether this decree would give the Police and the Armed Forces the discretion to detain citizens in a discretionary manner and began making raids.
These citizens were not only sent to barracks or confinement centers, but also exhibited as they do with accused of criminal offenses. And they even subjected them to ridicule: they were forced to exercise and repeat that they would not violate the measures again among others who were denounced and others exposed in videos on social media.
The decree in question also stated that those caught without justification on the street were deprived of the cash aid then given by the government, of $ 300 per month per household.
Meanwhile, confined in containment centers, they complained about the lack of adequate conditions, that they were not tested for coronavirus or that if they were tested they delayed their response, so much so that many reported that much more than 30 days had elapsed.
Many citizens attended the Constitutional Court. The Amnesty International report states that between March 13 and May 27 alone, 330 habeas corpus appeals and 61 petitions for protection were filed in this court.
“In many of these cases, affected people alleged that the conditions in the containment centers were inadequate, that they had no cleaning products and drinking water, and that they did not have access to medication for chronic diseases,” he says. AI.
It also includes data from the Office of the Attorney General for the Defense of Human Rights for having received between March and May 44 complaints from detainees who said they had suffered previous illnesses.
The report reports the case of a diabetic woman and mother of a three-year-old boy who went out to buy food and medicine for her but was arrested and locked up for more than a month in precarious conditions and exposed to virus.
The Chamber reverses arrests but government does not abide by
The Constitutional Chamber finally determined that the authorities had no legal basis to incarcerate between these centers as a form of punishment and there were even people who testified that they had been detained when they went out to buy food or medicine, he says. the report.
Young man shot by police in Sant Julià during compulsory quarantine. Photo EDH / Archive
In this case we must remember the lawsuit filed in favor of three women who in Jiquilisco, Usulután, were arrested by the military just the day the mandatory closure began despite having with them proof of the food they had gone out to buy for their families . They spent three days detained in the police delegation.
The Chamber also ordered the cessation of these arbitrary arrests and the immediate release of these persons, as well as the conduct of virus testing. But the Bukele government not only questioned the Chamber calling it wanting to take away its powers and encourage the spread of COVID-19, but it did not comply with the sentences and arrests and confinement followed.
Amnesty also points to the Salvadoran government’s excessive use of force by state agents and cites two examples, one of them of a young man from Sonsonate who went out on his motorbike to buy food and fuel. , but one of the cops either hit him and shot him in the leg. Days later, prosecutors ordered the arrest of the police officer.
“The Office of the Attorney General for the Defense of Human Rights received hundreds of allegations of human rights violations committed by security forces, including excessive use of force and ill-treatment, during the implementation of quarantine,” Amnesty says.
The report also includes Bukele’s veto of Legislative Decree 620 guaranteeing life insurance and biosecurity equipment for health personnel, after the allegations that infected health personnel and the lack of suitable equipment. This decree was later endorsed by the Constitutional Chamber.
Without reparation to war victims
Amnesty International also denounces in its report that both the government and the legislature have failed to comply with the families of the victims of the war that bled the country and left more than 70,000 dead.
The Legislative Assembly did not approve the Law for the Comprehensive Recognition and Protection of Human Rights Defenders and for the Guarantee of the Right to Defend Human Rights, the bill had been presented to the Assembly in 2018, “says the report.
In February, AI says, the Legislature passed a decree containing the Special Law on Transitional Justice, Reparation and National Reconciliation, which included provisions that hindered the investigation and effective punishment of those responsible for crimes under international law.
But the organization questions that while President Bukele vetoed the decree later that month, the government itself “did not make public information regarding military operations that had taken place during the internal armed conflict (between 1980 and 1992) and denied judicial access to the files related to the Mozote massacre, committed in 1981 “.
The Armed Forces denied the investigating judge of San Francisco Gotera who has the case of the Mozote massacre, access to almost all the garrisons where he arrived to review the military archives and ask for possible evidence to clarify the massacre in Mozote and neighboring sites in December 1981, one more emblematic occurred during the war.
The report also devotes a few lines to the fact that El Salvador maintains the total ban on abortion, which it considers to be a women’s right.