Category Archives: El Salvador

Hurricane Julia: Nicaragua braces amid flash flood and mudslide warnings

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Nicaraguan soldiers assist evacuations as up to 38cm of rain forecast across Central America after tropical storm strengthened into hurricane

Hurricane Julia swept by just south of Colombia’s San Andres island on Saturday evening soon after strengthening from a tropical storm, as Nicaraguans rushed to prepare for the storm’s arrival on their coast overnight.

After gaining power throughout the day, Julia’s maximum sustained winds had increased to 120km/h (75mph) by Saturday evening, the US National Hurricane Center said.

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El Salvador to escalate its security crackdown after death of police officers

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President Nayib Bukele vowed to step up its ‘war on gangs’ even as 2% of the country’s population is jailed

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has vowed to escalate his controversial “war on gangs” after three police officers were killed in what appeared to be the first major reaction to a security crackdown that critics have called one of the most dramatic in recent Latin American history.

Bukele’s government claims more than 43,000 Salvadorians have been thrown in jail since it imposed a “state of exception” in late March – leaving almost 2% of the country’s entire adult population behind bars.

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El Salvador accused of ‘massive’ human rights violations with 2% of adults in prison

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More than 36,000 people arrested in just over two months in crackdown orchestrated by President Nayib Bukele

Amnesty International has accused El Salvador’s government of committing “massive human rights violations” during an extraordinary security crackdown that has seen more than 36,000 people arrested in just over two months.

The clampdown was orchestrated by the Central American country’s authoritarian-minded president, Nayib Bukele, in late March after a sudden eruption of bloodshed that saw 87 murders in a single weekend.

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World’s most violent cities: Medellín crime surge helps Latin America top list

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Region has two-thirds of world’s most dangerous cities, with Bogotá, Rio, Mexico City and San Salvador also named in study

When police found the body of Marcela Graciano, a 31-year-old Colombian DJ, last Thursday, the brutality of the crime shocked even them. Her body, found in a house in a suburb of Medellín – Colombia’s second city – revealed signs of torture and her hands had been tied behind her back.

“The body was in an advanced state of decomposition,” the local police chief, Col Rolfy Mauricio Jiménez, said. The Valle de Aburrá municipality has had 11 murders this year, authorities said.

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El Salvador: woman sentenced to 30 years in prison for homicide after miscarriage

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Activists say case offers a stark warning to women in the US, where the supreme court is considering overturning Roe v Wade

A court in El Salvador has sentenced a woman who suffered a miscarriage to 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide, in a case which activists said offers a stark warning to women in the United States, where the supreme court is considering overturning a key ruling which legalized abortion.

The woman, identified only as “Esme”, was sentenced on Monday, after nearly two years under pre-trial detention, following her arrest when she sought medical care in a public hospital.

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Erosion of abortion rights gathers pace around the world as US signals new era

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A leaked supreme court draft ruling shows the US is set to end 50 years of a woman’s right to choose. Elsewhere, the battle still rages

In 2022, abortion remains one of the most controversial and bitterly contested ethical and political battlegrounds. It is illegal for women to terminate their pregnancies in any circumstance in 24 countries, with a further 37 restricting access in any case except when the mother’s life is in danger.

As a leaked document signals that the US supreme court is poised to strike down the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade, millions of American women face losing their access to legal abortions, joining millions more living in those countries rejecting a woman’s right to choose.

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El Salvador press cries censorship as anti-gang law targets media

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El Salvador’s congress has authorised sentences of 10-15 years for media spreading gangs’ messages

El Salvador’s congress has authorised prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from gangs, prompting accusations of censorship from press freedom groups.

The vote late on Tuesday was the latest in a flurry of legislative action against the gangs after 62 suspected gang killings on 26 March led President Nayib Bukele to seek and win a state of emergency. Harsh measures against imprisoned gang members and increased prison sentences followed, as well as the arrests of some 6,000 people accused of being gang members.

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El Salvador reels as 6,000 people arrested in unprecedented crackdown

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Authoritarian populist president Nayib Bukele has suspended rights in state of emergency justified as attack on MS13 gang

Distraught families across El Salvador are searching for information on the fate of their loved ones after almost 6,000 people were arrested in an unprecedented security crackdown over the past week.

Men, women and children have been rounded up across the Central American country since the government declared a state of emergency on 27 March, suspending constitutional rights including the presumption of innocence.

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El Salvador locks down prisons after wave of 87 killings over weekend

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Government declares state of emergency after arresting more than 600 gang suspects and ordering food restrictions

The government of El Salvador said it had arrested more than 600 gang suspects and ordered reductions in food for prison inmates, after a wave of killings over the weekend.

The government declared a state of emergency and locked down prisons after 87 murders were committed Friday, Saturday and Sunday. By comparison, there were 79 homicides in the entire month of February.

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Human rights officials call for Pegasus spyware ban at El Salvador hearing

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights holds hearing on using Israeli spyware against journalists and activists

Senior human rights officials have repeated calls for a ban on the powerful Israeli spyware Pegasus until safeguards are in place to protect civilians from illegal hacking by governments.

Calls for a moratorium on the sale and use of the military-grade spyware were made on Wednesday at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) into widespread unlawful surveillance using Pegasus spyware against journalists and activists in El Salvador.

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El Salvador court orders arrest of former president over 1989 priest massacre

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Alfredo Cristiani, who left the country in 2021, is accused of knowing of military plans to massacre six Jesuit priests

A court in El Salvador has ordered the arrest of former president Alfredo Cristiani in relation to the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests and two others by soldiers.

Prosecutors allege that Cristiani knew of the military’s plan to eliminate the priests and did nothing to stop them.

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El Salvador’s former president charged over 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests

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Alfredo Cristiani and former military officers to face trial in long process to bring killings’ masterminds to justice

Prosecutors in El Salvador have charged the former president Alfredo Cristiani over the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests that sparked international outrage.

Prosecutors also announced charges against a dozen other people, including former military officers, over the massacre. The list of charges will apparently include murder, terrorism and conspiracy.

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El Salvador woman punished under strict abortion law freed after 10 years

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‘Elsy’ was sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide over miscarriage and is fifth such woman to be released since December

El Salvador has released another woman imprisoned for aggravated homicide who after suffering an obstetric emergency was accused of aborting her pregnancy in a country where abortion under any circumstances is banned.

The woman, who activists helping her identified only as Elsy, had served more than a decade of a 30-year sentence. She was the fifth woman released before completion of her sentence since late December of last year.

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US accuses El Salvador of secretly negotiating truce with gang leaders

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In 2020, Nayib Bukele’s administration ‘provided financial incentives’ to MS-13 and the Barrio 18 street gangs, US treasury says

The US has accused the government of El Salvador president Nayib Bukele of secretly negotiating a truce with leaders of the country’s feared MS-13 and Barrio 18 street gangs.

The explosive accusation on Wednesday cuts to the heart of one of Bukele’s most highly touted successes in office: a plunge in the country’s murder rate.

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Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila

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El Salvador ‘responsible for death of woman jailed after miscarriage’

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Inter-American court of human rights orders Central American country to reform harsh policies on reproductive health

The Inter-American court of human rights has ruled that El Salvador was responsible for the death of Manuela, a woman who was jailed in 2008 for killing her baby when she suffered a miscarriage.

The court has ordered the Central American country to reform its draconian policies on reproductive health.

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El Salvador rights groups fear repression after raids on seven offices

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NGOs believe raids, officially part of an embezzlement inquiry, are an attempt to ‘criminalise social movements’

Rights activists in El Salvador said they will not be pressured into silence after prosecutors raided the offices of seven charities and groups in the Central American country.

“They’re trying to criminalise social movements,” said Morena Herrera, a prominent women’s rights activist. “They can’t accept that they are in support of a better El Salvador.”

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Global heating ‘may lead to epidemic of kidney disease’

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Deadly side-effect of heat stress is threat to rising numbers of workers in hot climates, doctors warn

Chronic kidney disease linked to heat stress could become a major health epidemic for millions of workers around the world as global temperatures increase over the coming decades, doctors have warned.

More research into the links between heat and CKDu – chronic kidney disease of uncertain cause – is urgently needed to assess the potential scale of the problem, they have said.

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Nayib Bukele calls himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’ – but is he joking?

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El Salvador’s president is consolidating power and seems intent on rewriting the country’s constitution

Among the colourful houses of Comunidad Iberia, an impoverished neighbourhood of San Salvador, the dark glass cube of the Urban Centre for Welfare and Opportunities (or Cubo in its Spanish acronym) is an eye-catching piece of urban architecture. Inside local children take art classes, read in the library and play online games. Outside, a mural depicting Armando Bukele, the father of El Salvador’s president, extols Salvadorans to “live with love and responsibility”.

Futuristic and faintly ominous, the Cubo is a fitting tribute to Nayib Bukele’s presidency. Since coming to power in June 2019, the 40-year-old former publicist has adopted bitcoin as legal tender, used his social-media accounts to generate an approval rating that is the envy of presidents worldwide, and introduced authoritarian measures to undermine the country’s political opposition and civil society.

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Scepticism grows in El Salvador over pioneering Bitcoin gamble

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Country will be first to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender next month – but economists are sounding warnings over risks

Litha María de Los Angeles slaps two cheese-filled pupusas – the El Salvadoran cornmeal flatbread – on the griddle. With a camera click on the QR code, she receives her payment: four hundred-thousandths of a Bitcoin. Then, as the rain pelts the corrugated iron roof and a gust of wind lifts the blue plastic table cloths, the power cuts out.

A tumultuous few weeks awaits El Salvador as it prepares to become the first country to adopt Bitcoin, the world’s most popular decentralised digital currency, as legal tender on 7 September. With that deadline looming, a host of challenges – technological, financial and criminal – threaten to sink the plan of the president, Nayib Bukele, to ride the Central American economy out of its current choppy waters on the back of a cryptocurrency wave.

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