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(TJV) El Salvador has moved approximately 2,000 prisoners, most of them suspected gang members, to a newly opened 40,000-person mega-prison, VOA reported.
“This will be their new home, where they won’t be able to do any more harm to the population,” President Nayib Bukele wrote on Twitter.
Courtesy of the president of El Salvador @nayibbukele https://t.co/vQ5Z2Hs5H3
— The Jewish Voice (@JewishVoice) February 27, 2023
Photos of prisoners displayed on the Internet showed the highly tattooed, barefoot men with shaved heads stripped down to white boxer shorts.
Bukele went on the country’s airwaves to share a 35-minute video to display the new prisons late last year.
Ayer inauguramos el Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo…
Una gigantesca obra realizada en tan solo 7 meses, y que además es una pieza fundamental para ganar por completo la guerra contra pandillas.https://t.co/TSCkfl41EY
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 1, 2023
President Nayib Bukele has declared a “war” on violent gangs in the Central American country, and the mega-prison is part of that campaign.
He posted on Twitter: “This will be their new home, where they won’t be able to do any more harm to the population.”
Human rights groups have objected to the campaign because they say innocent people have been caught up in it, with some dying before they could prove their innocence.
The left wing editorial pages of Washington Post and The Guardian were swift to call these actions a “police state” and focused heavilly on the possiblity of innocents being arrested. The campaign, however, remains popular with many Salvadoreans, reports say.
The transnational street gang La Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, has local chapters, or cliques, throughout the world, including El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and the United States. MS-13 members and associates engage in crimes such as murder, narcotics trafficking, extortion and obstruction of justice.
For decades, El Salvador had one of the highest rates of gang-related violence in the world. In 2015, the country’s homicide rate reached 103 homicides per 100,000 people–or 6,650 homicides registered that year–making it the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere.
Between March 25 and 27 , 2022 at least eighty-seven people were murdered in a wave of violence that Salvadoran authorities blamed on Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, two of the country’s most notorious criminal gangs. More than sixty people were killed on March 26 alone, marking the deadliest day on record since the civil war ended in 1992. The victims varied widely demographically and most of them had no known connection to any gangs, according to El Faro, an investigative news outlet based in the country.
The recent gang crack downs have been widely successful, as murders in El Salvador tumbled 56.8% in 2022 amid a widespread crackdown on gang violence, as per Reuters.
