Investigating El Salvador’s crackdown on gangs
A crackdown on gangs in El Salvador drops the murder rate in the country by more than 50 percent, but at what price?
It has been more than a year since El Salvador declared a state of emergency as part of President Nayib Bukele’s promise to crack down on gangs. Since March 2022, the country’s murder rate has dropped by more than half. But, in the process, the government arrested almost 70,000 people while suspending every citizen’s constitutional right to legal defence and allowing indefinite pre-trial detention. Despite El Salvador’s repressive new reality, Bukele and his policy remain extremely popular. Raising the question, is El Salvador becoming a police state?
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- Monica Villamizar (@monica_vv), Freelance Correspondent
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