<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress has urged the Government to address, in its bilateral and multilateral relations, the human rights crisis in El Salvador as a result of President Nayib Bukele's "authoritarian drift," particularly since the imposition of the state of emergency in March 2022 for reasons of citizen security.</strong></h4> The Non-Law Proposal, presented in early April by the Plurinational Parliamentary Group Sumar, approved on May 6 by the Foreign Affairs Committee with modifications introduced by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), and published on May 28 by the Official Gazette of Congress, "expresses its concern about the human rights crisis generated by the disproportionality of the emergency measures and the new exceptional legal framework implemented since March 2022 in El Salvador, in line with the calls of regional and universal mechanisms for the protection of human rights." Likewise, it urges the Government, “within the framework of its bilateral and multilateral relations, to urge the Government of El Salvador to restore the rights and guarantees suspended since March 2022 within the framework of the state of emergency established in El Salvador for reasons of citizen security,” to allow “access to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and UN protection mechanisms, particularly to detention centers and judicial hearings, so that they can verify the general conditions of observance of human rights,” and to “facilitate a dialogue with national and international civil society organizations and international human rights protection mechanisms, which can contribute to establishing an effective public security policy that respects human rights.” In its explanatory statement, Sumar denounces that, “in recent years, El Salvador has suffered a serious setback in the democratic institutions that emerged from the 1992 Peace Accords that ended eleven years of armed conflict.” “The political and social progress achieved since then has been reversed by the president’s authoritarian drift.” "Nayib Bukele," asserts the party led by Second Vice President Yolanda Díaz. "Since he won the presidency in 2019, and after obtaining an absolute parliamentary majority with his Nuevas Ideas party in 2021, El Salvador has been going through a period of democratic regression, in which the separation of powers and their independence have been significantly weakened," it continues. The motion asserts that, "under Nayib Bukele's mandate, measures have been approved that represent a significant restriction on the individual and collective freedoms of citizens." "Furthermore, constant evictions of rural and urban communities and residents, especially those living in poverty, are being reported to further private political and economic interests, which also results in emigration and family disintegration," it adds. Among the abuses recorded by the PNL are the illegal dismissals and appointments of the Attorney General and justices of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. and judges, which allowed the Constitutional Chamber to allow "the reelection of President Bukele, despite the fact that the Constitution does not provide for it." <h5><strong>Arbitrary detentions, torture, and deaths in state custody</strong></h5> The report also records "reports of attacks and harassment against the political opposition, human rights activists, unions, independent journalists, and NGOs, to hinder their work supporting the most vulnerable populations," as well as "thousands of arbitrary detentions, the adoption of a policy of torture in detention centers, and hundreds of deaths in state custody," according to Amnesty International. The motion also draws attention to "the increased militarization of public security, especially in marginalized and impoverished communities," which "has evoked the horrors of the past, when the armed forces exercised repressive control over the population." "This approach, combined with the stigmatization of human rights organizations and the independent press by state agents and the obstruction of their work, has created a climate of fear and intimidation and fosters self-censorship," it continues. "Since March 2022, the state of emergency has been distorted, becoming the fundamental instrument of a repressive policy that is causing a significant increase in arbitrary arrests, with serious violations of fundamental human rights and without respect for the principle of presumption of innocence or due process," denounces the Sumar motion, approved by Congress. This situation, he asserts, has been denounced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Committee on Torture, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CDHI), whose latest report indicates that, “according to available information, 73,000 people were detained from March 27, 2022, to the beginning of November 2023, the vast majority of whom were placed in pretrial detention. The Commission received reports of human rights violations that include: systematic and widespread illegal and arbitrary detentions; illegal searches of homes; abuses in the use of force; and violations of the rights of children and adolescents.”
