Although the emergency regime provides for the elimination of violence in the country, its application threatens the stability of the population. | Photo: EFE
SAN SALVADOR, May 11 (RHC) – Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) program director Leonor Arteaga denounced the day before that failing to notify families of detainees during the state of emergency can be considered protocol for “enforced disappearances.” “, according to international law.
Leonor Arteaga recalled that “no one shall be kept in ‘secret’, the deprivation of liberty must always be entered in a register and there must be communication with the family”, and this is reflected in the Inter-American Convention and the International Enforcement Disappear.
He called for an investigation into the arrests made as part of an extension of the emergency regime in Nayib Bukele’s government at the request of the El Salvador Congress.
The measure, which bans Salvadorans from constitutional guarantees, was taken by the government as a containment measure following the escalation of violence in the country and the killing of 87 people in late March.
The DPLF representative, who is also a lawyer specializing in human rights, transitional justice, gender and citizen security, pointed out that “secret detentions, at least temporarily, need to be investigated as enforced disappearances, taking into account the context of mass arrests, with almost no guarantees of due process and little judicial control”.
He pointed out that although El Salvador is not a party to the Convention on Enforced Disappearances, the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance obliges it to provide information.
The country’s police authorities have recorded the arrest of around 27,344 suspected gang members, around 70 percent of whom were arbitrarily intercepted in violation of their human rights. (Source/Telesur)