The government of El Salvador on Saturday sent 10,000 soldiers and police to seal off a town on the outskirts of the nation’s capital to search for gang members.
The operation was one of the largest mobilizations yet in Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s nine-month-old crackdown on street gangs that long extorted money from businesses and ruled many neighborhoods of the capital, San Salvador.
The troops blocked roads going in and out of the township of Soyapango, checking people’s documents. Special teams went into the town looking for suspected gang members.
Photo: AFP
“Starting now, the township of Soyapango is completely surrounded,” Bukele wrote on Twitter.
He posted videos showing ranks of rifle-toting soldiers.
More than 58,000 people have been jailed since a state of emergency was declared following a wave of homicides in late March. Rights groups have criticized the mass roundups, saying they often sweep up young men based on their appearance or where they live.
It was part of what Bukele had called late last month “Phase Five” of the crackdown.
Bukele said such tactics worked in the town of Comasagua in October.
In October, more than 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded and closed off Comasagua to search for street gang members accused in a killing. Drones flew over the town and everyone entering or leaving the town was questioned or searched. About 50 suspects were detained in two days.
“It worked,” Bukele said.
The government estimates that homicides dropped 38 percent in the first 10 months of the year compared with the same period of last year.
Bukele requested that Salvadoran Congress grant him extraordinary powers after gangs were blamed for 62 killings on March 26, and that emergency decree has been renewed every month since then. It suspends some constitutional rights, and gives police more powers to arrest and hold suspects.
Under the decree, the right of association, the right to be informed of the reason for an arrest and access to a lawyer are suspended. The government also can intervene in the calls and mail of anyone they consider a suspect. The time someone can be held without charges is extended from three days to 15 days.
Rights advocates have said young men are frequently arrested just based on their age, on their appearance or whether they live in a gang-dominated slum.
El Salvador’s gangs, which have been estimated to count about 70,000 members in their ranks, have long controlled swaths of territory, and extorted and killed with impunity.
However, Bukele’s crackdown reached another level last week when the government sent inmates into cemeteries to destroy the tombs of gang members at a time of year when families typically visit their loved ones’ graves.
Nongovernmental organizations have tallied several thousand human rights violations and at least 80 in-custody deaths of people arrested during the crackdown.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS