Tens of thousands of military and police were deployed Saturday around Sojapang, in the San Salvador region, as part of the “war on gangs” launched by its president El SalvadorNaguib Bukele.
“As of now, the Soyapango community is completely surrounded. 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 policemen have occupied the city” 242,000 residents east of the capital, President Bukele said via Twitter.
The 40-year-old head of state had announced on November 23 that from now on cities will be cordoned off so that the military and police search houses, one by one, to track down and arrest gang members. Soyapango yesterday became the first city where the tactic is implemented.
“Citizens have nothing to fear, they can continue all their activities with complete peace of mind”, assured President Bukele. “This operation was launched against criminals, not against honest citizens.”
The cordoning off of cities to root out gang members is part of his government’s plan to restore security. “People see that the measures taken bring results”judged the criminologist Ricardo Sosa, adding that he does not find it so “surprising” that the citizens “mostly support the businesses”, because “they have suffered from the gangs”.
According to a poll by the Central American University (UCA), 75.9% of Salvadorans favor the state of exception and 9 out of 10 believe that crime has decreased.
Some 58,000 people, alleged gang members, have been arrested in El Salvador since President Bukele declared this “war” in late March.
To cope with the huge increase in prisoners, the authorities are building a giant prison with a nominal capacity of 40,000 in Tekoluka, a rural area in the central part of the country.
Soyapango was considered a gang den for years. But the measures taken by the Bukele government have resulted in a “tremendous improvement in security,” mayor Nersi Montano said earlier this week.
The state of emergency, declared at the end of March after a wave of 87 killings attributed to the Maras, allows arrests without warrants; the way the government operates has drawn much criticism from human rights groups, especially for the mass arrests of innocents, some of whom lost their lives at the hands of the security forces.
It has been extended by Congress, which controls the president’s party, the New Ideas faction, repeatedly, most recently until at least mid-December.
Source: News Beast
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