More than 3,000 minors, many with ‘no apparent connection to gangs’, have been arbitrarily arrested, Human Rights Watch says.
Thousands of children have been arrested in a mass antigang campaign in El Salvador since 2022 with many suffering abuse while in custody, said Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The arrest campaign, beginning in March 2022 as part of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s pledge to root out gangs from the once crime-ridden country, has created “severe human rights violations against children”, said the group in a new report on Tuesday documenting the abuses.
Police rounded up 3,319 minors in “countless indiscriminate raids” often targeting those in “low-income neighbourhoods” known to be hotbeds of crime, said the HRW report.
Many of those arrested have “no apparent connection to gangs’ abusive activity”, and were apparently targeted based on their physical appearance or socioeconomic background, it said.
At least 60 children suffered abuse in custody, the report alleged, including beatings and torture. Some were deprived of adequate food, healthcare, and contact with their families or coerced into making false confessions.
Others were left to be preyed on by adult detainees, with authorities taking few steps to stop beatings or sexual assault, according to the report.
“Many children have been doubly victimised by gang members who abused them and then by security forces who detained and mistreated them with possible lifelong consequences,” said HRW.
Their prison sentences, doled out with dubious evidence and lack of due process, can span up to 12 years for broadly defined crimes, it added.
El Salvador’s gang crackdown, under a state-declared state of emergency, has nearly wiped out its once soaring homicide rate, putting more than 80,000 alleged gangsters behind bars.
Today, El Salvador ranks among the safest countries in the Americas, earning President Bukele strong popular support in spite of his draconian tactics.
‘Don’t complain about what happens’
Bukele, who was re-elected in February with 85 percent of the vote, has threatened to use the same ironfisted approach against alleged price gougers, warning them to drop their prices or face the same fate as convicted gang members.
“I am going to issue a call, like we did to the gangs at the start of 2019,” Bukele said in a speech earlier this month. “We told them either stop killing people or don’t complain about what happens afterward.”
HRW’s Americas director, Juanita Goebertus, said El Salvador’s government should cease abusive practices in its anticrime campaign.
“The government should end its abusive approach and prioritise a rights-respecting and effective policy that dismantles criminal gangs, addresses child recruitment, and provides children with protection and opportunities,” said Goebertus.
