It highlights the government’s arbitrary arrests during the pandemic and exposing civilians to contamination in containment sites. The report also points to Bukele’s discrediting of journalists and organizations that hold him accountable for the use of funds.
The violation of human rights in El Salvador is portrayed in the Amnesty International 2020-2021 report by not only recording the arbitrary detentions of hundreds of civilians and detaining them in places with precarious sanitary conditions, but also by attacks on organizations and journalists. as the blame for the satisfaction of the victims of the conflict on the part of the government of Nayib Bukele.
The violation of the right to health is the first on the list of complaints to the Bukele administration. In the report, Amnesty International (AI) highlights the arbitrary arrests and incarceration of more than 2,000 people exposed to possible contamination because the centers in which they were forced to comply with quarantine failed to meet adequate hygiene conditions.
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Every year, this international organization, made up of 10 million people, monitors the human rights situation in independent countries that are subject to accountability, the report said.
“The centers (of confinement or confinement) did not meet international standards of sanitary conditions and physical distance, or that exposed the people interned in them to an unnecessary risk of contamination with COVID-19,” the report said.
Regarding arbitrary arrests, AI says those detained 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 entitled “Exceptional Prevention and Containment Measures to Declare the National Territory as an Area Subject to Sanitary Control, to Contain the COVID-19 Pandemic”. This meant that the government imposed a series of restrictive measures, including the closure of borders, the paralysis of economic activity and the imprisonment of civilians in their homes, allowing only one family member to go out to buy food, medicine or for a health service. emergency.
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The government was clear: the decree stipulated that staying at home was legal, except in an emergency or the need to stock up on food. Those who did not abide by the restrictions, the decree said, not justifying why they circulated on the streets, “pertinent criminal and civil responsibilities.”
Lawyers and some organizations disputed that this decree gave the police and armed forces the discretion to detain civilians in a discretionary manner and began raiding.
These civilians were not only sent to bartolinas or detention centers, but also put on display, as with those charged with criminal offenses. And they even mocked them: forcing them to do physical exercises, repeating that they would not violate the measures again, among others being charged and others exposed in videos on social networks.
The decree in question also stated that those caught on the street without justification were deprived of the money support the government then provided, of $ 300 per month per household.
Meanwhile, locked up in containment centers, they denounced the lack of adequate conditions, that they were not being tested for coronavirus, or that they slowed their response when they took the tests, so much so that many objected that there were many more than the established 30 days had passed.
Many citizens went to the Constitutional Chamber. Amnesty International’s report states that between March 13 and May 27 alone, 330 writings of habeas corpus and 61 petitions for amparo were submitted to that court.
“In many of these cases, affected people claimed that the conditions in the containment centers were inadequate, that they had no cleaning products and drinking water, and that they had no access to medication for chronic diseases,” says AI.
It also collects data from the Office of the Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights on receiving 44 complaints from inmates between March and May who said they had previous ailments.
The report records the case of a woman with diabetes and the mother of a three-year-old who went to buy food and medicine for her, but was detained and locked up in dire conditions for more than a month and exposed to the virus.
The Chamber reverses arrests, but the government does not comply
The Constitutional Chamber eventually found that the authorities lacked a legal basis to imprison those who entered these centers as a form of punishment and there were even those who stated that they had been detained when they left to buy food or medicine, said the report.
Young man shot by police officers in San Julián during mandatory quarantine. Photo EDH / Archives
In this case, it is worth remembering the lawsuit filed in favor of three women who were detained by the military in Jiquilisco, Usulután, on the day the compulsory detention began, despite having evidence of it. food they bought for their families. They were held at the police station for three days.
The Chamber also ordered the halting of these arbitrary arrests and the immediate release of these people, as well as testing for the virus. But the Bukele government has not only questioned the House by saying that it wants to remove powers and promote the spread of COVID-19, but has also failed to comply with the sentences and the arrests and incarceration continued.
Amnesty International also draws attention to the Salvadoran government’s excessive use of force by state agents and cites two examples, one of which is that of a young man from Sonsonate who went out on his motorcycle to buy food and fuel, but one of the police officers hit or hit and shot him in the leg. Days later, the prosecution ordered the police officer’s arrest.
“The Office for the Defense of Human Rights received hundreds of complaints of human rights violations by the security forces, including excessive use of force and mistreatment, during the application of the quarantine,” Amnesty said.
Also included in the report is Bukele’s veto against Legislative Decree 620 guaranteeing life insurance and biosafety equipment for health personnel, following complaints that contaminated health personnel and lack of equipment were appropriate. Later that decree was ratified by the Constitutional Chamber.
Without recovery for war victims
Amnesty International also denounces in its report that both the government and the legislature have failed to meet the families of the victims of the war who bled out the country and left more than 70,000 dead.
The Legislative Assembly did not pass the law for the comprehensive recognition and protection of human rights defenders and for the guarantee of the right to defense of human rights, the bill of which was submitted to the Assembly in 2018, ”the report said.
In February, AI said, the Legislative Assembly passed a decree containing the Special Law on Transitional Justice, Restoration and National Reconciliation, which contained provisions that hindered the investigation and effective punishment of those responsible for crimes under international law.
But the organization doubts that although President Bukele vetoed the decree at the end of that month, the same government “did not disclose and denied information about the military operations that took place during the internal armed conflict (between 1980 and 1992). judicial access to the files related to the El Mozote massacre committed in 1981 ”.
The armed forces denied San Francisco Gotera investigating magistrate, who has the case of the El Mozote massacre, access to almost all of the garrisons he arrived at to view the military records and possibly gather evidence to support the El Mozote massacre and nearby sites. clarify in December 1981, a more iconic one that took place during the war.
The report also dedicates some lines to the fact that El Salvador enforces a blanket ban on abortion, which it considers a women’s right.