El Salvador under State of Exception
After a most violent days that left 87 civilians dead due to the breakdown of secret negotiations between the government of El Salvador and the MS-13, one of the main gangs, the president of the Central American country, Nayib Bukele, called his assembly to approve an Exception Regime that since March 27, 2022 suspended some constitutional guarantees of the Salvadoran population that ranged from the cancellation of the right to freedom of assembly and association, the right to defense, communications were intervened and authorized the armed forces and the National Civil Police to detain any person considered suspicious even without evidence to support their capture.The Regime lasted from March and during the rest of 2022 and 2023, leaving more than 75,000 people detained on suspicion of belonging to a criminal group, there were also dozens of deaths with signs of torture inside the country's prisons and various organizations of human rights pointed out the abuses of the government towards the citizens who were detained arbitrarily.The most populous neighborhoods and communities were intervened by the military, controlling the mobility of civilians, violent arrests were recorded, and a crisis broke out on the outskirts of prisons due to the thousands of relatives who were looking for their detained relatives without obtaining any information from them. Their whereabouts gave rise to movements of victims of the Exception Regime that triggered protests in the streets of the country to demand the release of people who were unjustly detained and who, in many cases, spent up to more than one year in prison.Some peoples that get out of prison was talking and telling, under anonymity, about of the torture that they suffered inside of salvadoran jail during their capture on State of Exception time.
The armed force during a patrol round in a neighborhood of San Salvador.
Having tattoos was a reason for capture for many people during the first days of the State of Exception.
Dozens of people were searching in the rain for information about their captured relatives.
A woman who traveled five hours to obtain information about her brother detained during the State of Exception in El Salvador.
People captured during the State of Exception moments before entering a prison. Many of them would spend more than a year in prison being innocent.
A father carries on his shirt the photograph of his son who disappeared during the massive police arrests in the State of Exception.
A mentally ill man was captured during the State of Exception. In prison he caught a skin disease.
Relatives of a person who died in a Salvadoran prison, during the State of Exception, cry at the funeral.
In El Salvador, dozens of people died inside prisons with signs of torture during the State of Exception.