Human Rights Group Finds Over 260 Have Died in Salvadoran Prisons Since 2022

Countries all over Latin America have been experiencing the impacts of gang violence for decades. El Salvador, for example, had one of the highest rates of gang-related violence in the world, reaching almost 7,000 homicides in 2015 alone. Under the direction of El Salvador’s current president Nayib Bukele, intense crackdowns have been implemented, including confining prisoners to their cells 24 hours a day and crowding hundreds of them into single rooms. In 2022, his administration declared a state of emergency, introducing mass arrest policies that saw almost 100,000 people imprisoned in 2023. Many within the country have responded positively to these changes, as El Salvador now has one of the lowest homicide rates in the country. However, the human rights organization Cristosal found in a recent report that at least 261 people have died in these prisons. They found a variety of causes for these deaths including illness and violence, as well as blatant human rights abuses, the Associated Press reported.

“People have died in El Salvador’s prisons and jails because of torture, a lack of food, unhealthy conditions, an inhuman lack of attention and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” Zaira Navas told AP News, a lawyer who authored the report. “There is a deliberate policy of not protecting the rights of incarcerated people.”

Under the original state of emergency declaration, the government suspended the right to legal counsel or bail or house arrest, increased the amount of time that people can be detained without charge, monitored communications without warrants, increased prison sentences, and introduced a fifteen-year-maximum charge for reproducing gang messaging. To carry out mass arrests, police and military officers raided houses and implemented checkpoints where they checked people’s ID cards, and searched their cars and bags. If they considered someone suspicious, which was often based on their appearance or place of residence, they were forced to strip so they could be checked for gang-related tattoos. Even when prisons became overcrowded, Bukele’s administration put pressure on police and military to meet arrest quotas, though the government has had to release 7,000 people who were arrested due to lack of evidence. They also built additional prisons to accommodate the rise in detainees. Since 2022, the state of emergency has been extended at least 24 times and President Bukele was even re-elected in February, despite the constitution prohibiting presidential second terms due to the popularity of his policies.

The people within these prisons face horrible conditions as well. According to Cristosal, their rations were decreased to two meals a day consisting of beans and tortillas. When not released for 30 minutes a day for exercise, they are confined for long periods of time without access to light, hygienic resources, clean water, medical care, mattresses, sheets, or food, and packed into cells with as many as 300 other people. Today, El Salvador has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. It is unknown when or if the state of emergency will end, or if Bukele will face consequences for the more than 260 people who have died in these prisons.

The country’s high homicide rate peaked at 105 per 100,000 people in 2015 has diminished since 2019, reaching a historic low in 2022, according to official figures. However, the lack of transparency and reports of manipulation make it hard to determine the accuracy of government reports or to estimate the true extent of the decrease in violence, Human Rights Watch reported.

“Three years ago we met with President Nayib Bukele and he pledged to respect human rights. Since then, however, he has repeatedly failed to keep his word”, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International stated on the organization’s website. “On the pretext of punishing gangs, the Salvadoran authorities are committing widespread and flagrant violations of human rights and criminalizing people living in poverty. Instead of offering an effective response to the dramatic violence caused by gangs and the historic public security challenges facing the country, they are subjecting the Salvadoran people to a tragedy. Victims of gang violence urgently deserve justice, but this can only be achieved through robust investigations and fair trials that ensure due process and effective sentencing.”