Social distancing - not Photos show prison crackdown on gangsters
El Salvador’s government launched a crackdown on jailed gang members after 60 people were killed over the weekend, ending months of remarkable calm in the Central American country.
Photos released by the office of President Nayib Bukele showed hundreds of inmates stripped to their shorts and jammed together on prison floors as their cells were searched. Some wore face masks, but most had little protection against the possible spread of the coronavirus.
Authorities said jailed gang members had ordered the killings. Bukele authorised police and soldiers to ‘‘use lethal force’’ against gangs if they or other Salvadorans were under threat. Authorities ordered 24-hour lockdowns in several prisons and said gang leaders would be sent to solitary confinement.
‘‘Not a single ray of sunlight is going to enter any cell,’’ prisons director Osiris Luna Meza threatened on Twitter yesterday. He said the measures were ‘‘necessary to detain the wave of homicides.’’
El Salvador was until recently one of the world’s deadliest countries. Homicide rates soared to 105 per 100,000 people in 2015.
Criminal groups such as MS13 and the 18th Street gang still control large swaths of territory. But the violence declined, and murders have plummeted under Bukele.
Jose Miguel Cruz, an expert on El Salvador’s gangs at Florida International University, said the recent surge in homicides ‘‘destroyed the idea that the government has absolute control of the crime situation.’’
While authorities claimed their security policies were bringing down violence, Cruz said, the gangs also played a role.
‘‘Gangs didn’t disappear,’’ he said. ‘‘They were there and they continued extorting the population.’’ Cruz said the gangs apparently chose for strategic reasons to refrain from murders in recent months – but then they decided ‘‘to basically kill in a very visible way to attract attention during the weekend.’’ Their goal, he said, was unclear.
Political and security analysts have suspected that the sharp decline in violence over the past year reflected some kind of deal between the government and the gangs. Authorities have denied negotiating with gangs.
The wave of killings began on Friday, with 23 people slain – the most in a single day since Bukele was sworn in last June. It was not immediately evident what touched off the bloodshed.
– Washington Post