From the Editorial Staff
The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, July 17, 2024, p. 28
Some 3,000 children and adolescents, many of them unrelated to criminal activities, have been detained and imprisoned in El Salvador as a result of the state of emergency imposed by President Nayib Bukele in 2022, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
Many of the minors detained during the state of emergency lived in low-income communities, where violence was constant.; In addition, they were sentenced because authorities They were forced to make false confessions, through a combination of abusive court agreements and sometimes ill-treatment or torture.the human rights organization denounced in a report.
HRW documented, among other cases, that of Carolina González (a pseudonym used to protect the young woman’s identity), a 17-year-old student from a rural town in the department of Sonsonate, who was detained by authorities without an arrest warrant.
Months later, the international organization reported that “a judge pressured Carolina and seven other minors to plead guilty to collaborating with the gang.” MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha)”which she refused to do.
Carolina and three other minors reported that a magistrate told them that If one of them rejected the plea agreement, they would all serve sentences twice as long..
They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison. We all wanted to be with our momCarolina told the organization.
The absence of independent oversight mechanisms has facilitated widespread human rights violationsHRW said.
The state of emergency has resulted in serious abuses, including the confinement of minors in the same spaces as adults, a flagrant violation of international and Salvadoran law, he added.
The report also noted that judges and prosecutors routinely held minors in prolonged pretrial detention, a practice that, given the poor conditions in juvenile detention facilities, has exposed them to abuse.
Between September and December 2023, HRW interviewed victims, activists and officials in the departments of San Salvador, Sonsonate and Cuscatlán.
The report can be consulted at https://shorturl.at/bJwD4