It highlights the government’s arbitrary arrests in the event of a pandemic and the exposure of citizens to contagion in remote areas. The report also indicates Bukele’s discrediting of journalists and organizations that make him responsible for using the funds.
The violation of human rights in El Salvador was described in Amnesty International’s 2020-2021 report not only by recording the arbitrary detention of hundreds of citizens and limiting them to places with poor sanitation, but also by attacking organizations and journalists. as a duty to repair the victims of the conflict from the government of Nayib Bukele.
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 detention of more than 2,000 people who have been exposed to potential infections because the centers where they were forced to comply with quarantine did not meet adequate health conditions.
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Every year, this international organization of 10 million people monitors the human rights situation in independent countries that are subject to accountability, the report details.
“The centers (isolation or isolation) did not meet international standards of sanitary conditions and physical distance or which exposed those interned to an unnecessary risk of COVID-19 infection,” the report said.
Regarding the arbitrary arrests, AI says that those detained for alleged non-compliance with the mandatory quarantine measure at their home, “were taken to solitary confinement centers or police stations as if they had committed a crime.”
On March 21, 2020, Executive Decree No. 12, entitled “Extraordinary prevention and isolation measures to declare the national territory as a sanitary area, to contain the COVID-19 pandemic”, entered into force. This meant that the government imposed a number of restrictive measures, including closing borders, paralyzing economic activity and closing citizens in their homes, allowing only one family member to go out to buy food, medicine or health care. emergency.
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The government was clear: the decree established that staying at home is a law, except in an emergency or the need to stock up on food. Anyone who did not comply with the restrictions, declared the decree and did not justify why he was driving on the streets, bore “relevant criminal and civil responsibilities”.
Lawyers and some organizations have questioned the fact that this decree gave the police and the armed forces the discretion to detain citizens in a discretionary manner and began raids.
These citizens were not only sent to bartolins or detention centers, but exposed, as in the case of those accused of crimes. And they even ridiculed them: they forced them to exercise and repeat that they would not violate the measures again, among others who were denounced and others exposed in videos on social networks.
The decree also provided that those caught unjustifiably on the street were deprived of the cash aid then granted by the government of $ 300 per month per household.
Meanwhile, locked up in isolation centers, they reported a lack of adequate conditions, that they had not been tested for coronavirus, or that if they did the tests, they delayed their response, so much so that many reported that they had gone much further. more than the established 30 days.
Many citizens went to the Constitutional Chamber. Amnesty International’s report states that between March 13 and May 27 alone, 330 habeas corpus documents and 61 amparo applications were filed with that court.
“In many of these cases, the affected people claimed that the conditions in the isolation centers were inadequate, that they lacked cleaning products and drinking water and that they did not have access to medicines for chronic diseases,” says AI.
It also collects data from the Office of the Prosecutor for the Defense of Human Rights, after receiving in March – May 44 complaints from detainees who stated that they had previous illnesses.
The report records the case of a diabetic woman and the mother of a three-year-old child who went out to buy food and medicine for her, but was detained and imprisoned for more than a month in precarious conditions and exposed to the virus.
The chamber cancels the arrests, but the government does not comply
The Constitutional Chamber eventually ruled that the authorities had no legal basis to limit those who entered these centers as punishment and there were even people who said they were detained when they went out to buy food or medicine. , is shown in the report.
Young man shot by police in San Julián during mandatory quarantine. Photo EDH / Archive
In this case, it is worth remembering the lawsuit filed in favor of three women who in Jiquilisco, Usulután, were detained by the military on the day the mandatory closure began, despite the fact that they had with them proof of the food they had come out to buy them for families. They were detained in the police station for three days.
The chamber also ordered the cessation of these arbitrary arrests and the immediate release of these people, as well as the testing of the virus. But the Bukele government not only questioned the House, calling it wanting to seize power and promote the spread of COVID-19, but did not comply with the sentences, and arrests and imprisonment continued.
Amnesty also points to the Salvadoran government’s excessive use of force by state agencies and cites two examples, one of them of a young man from Sonsonate who went out on a motorcycle to buy food and fuel, but one of the policemen hit him and shot him. standing. Days later, the Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of the police officer.
“The Office for the Defense of Human Rights has received hundreds of complaints about human rights violations committed by security forces, including excessive use of force and ill-treatment, during quarantine,” says Amnesty.
Also included in the report is Bukele’s veto of Legislative Decree 620, which ensured life insurance and biosecurity equipment for health workers, following complaints that the infected health personnel and lack of equipment were known to be adequate. Later, that decree was approved by the Constitutional Chamber.
Without repairing the victims of the war
Amnesty International also denounces in its report that both the government and the legislature did not 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 guaranteeing the right to human rights protection, whose law was presented to the Assembly in 2018 “, the report states.
In February, the AI said, the Legislative Assembly passed a decree containing the Special Law on Transitional Justice, Reparation and National Reconciliation, which included provisions preventing the effective investigation and 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 make public information about military operations that had taken 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 the investigating judge in San Francisco Gotera, which has the case of the El Mozote massacre, access to almost all the garrisons where he arrived to review military files and gather possible evidence to clarify the El Mozote massacre and nearby places. . in December 1981, a more iconic one that took place during the war.
The report also devotes a few lines to the fact that El Salvador maintains a total ban on abortion, which it considers to be a women’s right.