President’s mass arrests ‘punitive populism’

SANTA TECLA (AP):

A day after the bloodletting – 62 gang killings that convulsed El Salvador – the crackdown began.

Before dawn on Sunday, March 27, just hours after congress approved a state of emergency, heavily armed police and soldiers entered the packed, gang-controlled neighbourhood of San Jose El Pino.

Freed from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer, they went door to door, dragging out young men. They established a perimeter with barbed wire barricades where they controlled who entered and who left, demanding identification and searching everyone.

President Nayib Bukele has responded to the surge in gang killings with mass arrests in poor neighbourhoods like San Jose El Pino, each day posting the growing arrest total and photos of tattooed men. The highly publicised roundups are not the result of police investigations into the murders in late March, but propel a tough-on-crime narrative that critics are calling “punitive populism”.

In just over two weeks, more than 10,000 alleged gang members have been arrested – a huge number for a small country of 6.5 million people. They can be held for 15 days without charges, one of the measures decried by international human rights groups and the US government.

“They came in with everything,” said 36-year-old Héctor Fernandez on his way to his factory job on a recent morning. “Whoever didn’t open the door, they knocked it down. They were looking for the guys. I think they took almost all of them, but others managed to get out.”

Critics say the mass arrests are more show than substance. They note that amid all of the chest-thumping rhetoric and slickly produced videos of roughly handled prisoners, authorities are not talking about the investigations or arrests of those suspected of actual involvement in the March 26 killings. But many Salvadorans are pleased to see action against gangs that have long terrorised their communities.

“It’s for everyone’s safety,” Fernandez said, nervously looking around to see if anyone was watching. He said he minds his own business and hasn’t had trouble with the Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that controls his neighbourhood. “I leave (police and soldiers) search me. I go to work, come back in the evening, they search me. I pass and go home.”

Bukele, a highly popular master of social media, has filled his platforms with photos of handcuffed and bloodied gang members, orders to his security cabinet and attaboys from his supporters. At the same time, he has lashed out at human rights organisations and international agencies critical of some measures.