Prisoners are Being Tortured to Death in El Salvador's Prisons

A new report describes what goes on within the Central American nation's prisons, which now hold 2 percent of the adult population.
EG
By Emily Green
May 31, 2023, 10:04am

The 23-year-old prisoner arrived at the hospital with broken feet and hands, and what looked like burn marks on his back. His corpse was delivered to his family in a closed casket. The medical examiner’s office determined the man died a “sudden death.”

Torture and death have become normal in El Salvador’s prisons under authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, according to a new report by the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal. The report says that 153 people died in custody after being arrested under Bukele’s year-long crusade against gangs, including 47 this year, according to the new investigation.

The group said it has proof that at least 28 incarcerated people “died violently from torture, blows… asphyxiation by strangulation, injuries, among other causes.” It identified one case where the autopsy indicated the prisoner, who died from strangulation, may have been asphyxiated with a “rigid object” like a stick or baton.

The report is the most extensive reckoning to date of the human rights abuses that have occurred during Bukele’s campaign to dismantle the country’s violent street gangs—MS-13 and Barrio 18—which have long terrorized the country and fueled one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Even Bukele’s critics acknowledge that Bukele has largely succeeded, a feat that has made him wildly popular in El Salvador and an example to other Latin American countries enduring gang violence. But his crusade has come at a cost. Bukele has run roughshod over human rights, threatened critics with imprisonment, and kept El Salvador under what was supposed to be a temporary “state of emergency” for more than a year. The decree gives police free rein to arrest people without evidence, prohibits freedom of assembly, and denies citizens the right to legal counsel.

More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xqyb/el-salvador-prisons-gangs-torture