Salvadoran authorities are committing 'massive' human rights violations, with nearly 2%... - 0 views
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Salvadoran authorities have committed "massive" human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, torture, and ill-treatment, according to a new report from Amnesty International.
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The report, released Thursday, found that since late March, nearly 2% of the country has been detained, with at least 18 people having died in state custody.
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"Hopefully, just as they care because we have captured criminals, they would care about our children, about our elderly, about our working people, about the innocent Salvadorans who have suffered at the hands of those same criminals," he said during a speech before the Legislative Assembly.
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In one instance, a 16-year-old, who was arrested in April and held for 13 days for being an alleged member of an illegal group, was chained to a wall of the detention center, where he said he was beaten by police. Later, he was transferred to youth detention center, where he was beaten by gang members, who he said also threw a bag of urine at his head, it said.
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Many of the detainees are being held without due process "purely because the authorities view them as having been identified as criminals in the stigmatizing speeches of President Bukele's government, because they have tattoos, are accused by a third party of having alleged links to a gang, are related to someone who belongs to a gang, have a previous criminal record of some kind, or simply because they live in an area under gang control, which are precisely the areas with high levels of marginalization and that have historically been abandoned by the state," according to Amnesty.
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Bukele, the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator," took office in June 2019 with broad support, after promising to stand tough against gang violence