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This Saturday, April 6, 2024 on Por la Libre, Peninsula 360 Press Rolling Community Radio, Manuel Ortiz broadcast from El Salvador, a place where the Exception Regime, according to experts, has become an instrument of criminalization of people linked to to civil society organizations.
Gabriela Santos, director of the Institute of Human Rights of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA), considered that the country is experiencing a regression in terms of human rights, while compliance with the processes is not guaranteed, due to the fact that power is concentrated in a single person, President Nayib Bukele.
Currently, the Exception Regime has been inadequately used, not only for gangs but also with community leaders and other defenders of Human Rights.
"Even though we have all the elements that indicate that the person has no connection, I cannot guarantee that his family will be free, I cannot guarantee that following due process and the rules that exist, the person will be released." "Is everything arbitrary?" Santos stressed.
According to the 2nd Annual Report on Human Rights Violations that occurred within the framework of the emergency regime in El Salvador, worrying cases have been documented where the regime can be used to criminalize the work of journalists, defenders and community leaders, documenting cases where they could carry out the instrumentalization of the justice system to generate fear and silence voices, which leads to a dismantling of all community work carried out in the country.
According to documented cases, at least 34 human rights defenders have been detained within the framework of the regime and, of these, 23 cases correspond to women.
Rina Montti, director of Human Rights Research of the organization Cristosal, commented that the Exception Regime, legally speaking, is a temporary measure that must be taken in order to attack a specific problem, in a precise period.
A 2-year Exception Regime, after having been implemented with so many arbitrary detainees, becomes a weapon for the communities, said Rina Montti, adding that the measure is a weapon that is being carried out to control the population.
"We have had cases of police who have captured the new partners of their ex-partners, we have had police who have made arrests on a personal level, in the end they are revenge with family members, with ex-partners or as services to third parties," Montti pointed out.
Given this, the experts considered that the Exception Regime got out of control, a clear case is that of the community leader Santos Alfaro, which curiously happened in one of the areas of the country where the violence indicators have been extremely low, which seems senseless, leaving in doubt the real reason for his arrest.
Samuel RamÃrez, coordinator of the Movement of Victims of the Regime, MOVIR, explained that Human Rights violations are daily occurrences in El Salvador, since there are arbitrary arrests, persecutions, and military sieges that persecute people and, above all, young people.
?They have freed 7,000 people who were supposedly innocent, people who are human beings with the right to live a free life, and then what happens to the people who were imprisoned for 1 year or more? "Who is going to repair this damage?" RamÃrez commented.
In addition, he specified that in the case of Santos Alfaro, many people know that he was a good person and dedicated to sports, a man who was put on the spot.
José Santos Alfaro Ayala, renowned community leader and co-founder of the Tamarindo Foundation, which carries out social work in the Guarjila canton and surrounding areas, was captured by police officers and detained for allegedly being involved with gangs, under the Exception Regime.
To learn more about the topic, listen to the complete Por la Libre program on April 6, 2024, giving click here.
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