A police officer registers a man in Soyapango, El Salvador.Salvador Melendez (AP)
Police officers arrested Henry Joya on April 19, 2022. It was about 10pm and he was asleep. They pushed him out of his home in the Luz district of the municipality of San Salvador, and five months later his family found him dead after knowing nothing about him. The exceptional regime that President Nayib Bukele is introducing in El Salvador swallowed this man alive and then spat his body into a mass grave in La Bermeja Cemetery. But before that, he was – technically and according to human rights organizations – subjected to “disappearances”.
Arrested for alleged gang connections, Joya was later transferred to Mariona Prison, where prison authorities informed his family of his condition. Especially since he suffered from a mental disability that made him forget many things. But in early July, after two months in detention, news about Joya stopped. He did not appear on the Mariona prisoner lists. Jesús Joya started looking for his brother in other prisons. He couldn’t find him, he couldn’t find him… Joya’s family went unsuccessfully to other government institutions to inquire about his whereabouts until Jesús had an unwanted “feeling”: look for him at the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML).
Forensics showed the family a series of photos of bodies, including the face of Henry, a man who his neighbors in the Luz neighborhood describe as “helpful” and who “didn’t get in trouble.” The discovery came on September 19, but Jesús was amazed when he was told that 73 days ago his brother had been buried in the mass grave while they searched for him from prison to prison, from institution to institution, without anyone in would have been able to give them a little information.
The man was exhumed in October and died of pulmonary edema, according to the IML report. “However, a witness who shared a cell with him at Mariona Detention Center told the family that he was severely beaten by guards and that he died as a result of the beating,” documents a Foundation for the report Due Process, along with five other Salvadoran organizations, presented the Committee against Enforced Disappearances and the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances.
Three Patterns of Disappearance
Henry Joya’s case falls under one of the three patterns of enforced disappearances identified by the Foundation for Due Process report under El Salvador’s exemption regime. It’s a controversial measure that popular President Bukele has extended since March 2022, “neutralizing” brutal gang violence in Central America’s smallest country. The extraordinary measure overriding constitutional guarantees has sent more than 71,000 people to prison.
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Although the government attributes all detainees to gangs, human rights organizations have reported 5,490 “direct victims” outside the criminal structures. Figures shared by social organizations say there were around 13,581 “violations” as of July last year. Arbitrary detention is reported most frequently at 95%. However, the phenomenon of “short-term enforced disappearance” is now added.
The three patterns of enforced disappearance share commonalities: People are arrested by the police or military, who declare a state of emergency. They are arrested in public places in the presence of witnesses, and later their families go to different police centers to get information. There, however, they are denied that the arrest took place and also not where the arrested person is.
The first pattern, called A, shows that after a few weeks or months and after a long persistence with the police, the relatives “receive some information that will enable them to locate the person who is being held in a detention center”. Whereas in pattern B, after “several weeks or months and despite the insistence of the relatives and the filing of habeas corpus”, the relatives have no news about the detained person. “From the complaints received by the organizations that have signed this document, this appears to be the most common pattern,” the report says.
Finally, there is Pattern C, which is in some ways the most fatal in which to find the case of Henry Joya: “These are equally people who are captured by the police or the military in application of the state of emergency in public places .” In the presence of witnesses and eventual relatives, they go to various police centers to request information and it is officially recognized that the person has been arrested and taken to prison. Subsequently, the family has no further official information or communication with the detainee and after several months of searching again for their loved one, they find them out through the Institute of Forensic Medicine or through private individuals, such as a funeral home. that his relative died in the detention center. Many of these people are buried in mass graves before their loved ones learn of their deaths.
In late July last year, the ruling party-controlled parliament approved transitional provisions and reforms to the organized crime law to increase penalties for gang leaders and allow class-action trials to be held. During these mass trials with up to 900 people in prison, entire criminal structures are prosecuted instead of subjecting the accused to individual proceedings. In addition, drug trafficking laws and juvenile justice systems have been reformed in “curious” ways, the report submitted to the United Nations said.
“Taken together, these reforms make it easier for any person anonymously accused of committing a crime to remain in unofficial provisional detention indefinitely, to be convicted with flawed evidence, including reference witnesses, facilitating abuse of the criminal offense.” “, criticizes the Foundation for Due Process. Criticism that does not deter President Bukele, who continues to expand his regime of exception while boasting of having built “the largest prison in Latin America”.
“Armed with these legal tools, the police and military have carried out massive and indiscriminate arrests of people (…). This situation is exacerbated by the “de facto” practice and/or policy of the police and prison authorities to refuse any information about the condition of detainees to their relatives or defense lawyers”, regrets the civil organizations report. “Furthermore, there are no direct records of the detainees and no judicial review of the arrests. Most of them are young people in a situation of poverty and vulnerability, accused of crimes committed by illegal groups whose legal text is broad enough to allow and facilitate the arrest of people without any basis.
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