On Saturday, March 26, El Salvador recorded its most deadly day in recent history with 62 homicides. The murders led the Salvadorian parliament to announce a state of emergency in the country, hoping to crack down on gang-related violence.
The killings are reportedly linked to gangs across El Salvador, most notably the MS-13 gang. NPR reports that authorities captured five leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha gang and over 1,000 suspected gang members.
President Nayib Bukele’s decision to issue a state of emergency will limit the right to free assembly and allow officers to arrest individuals without reason.
The president also tweeted that all gang members inside the country’s prisons will be restricted to their cells 24 hours a day.
Bukele wrote in the tweet, “Message to the gangs: because of your actions, now your ‘homeboys’ won’t be able to see a ray of sunshine.”
The lockdown of civil rights will last 30 days with the possibility of extension, the parliament decided.
“We approve the exceptional regime, which will allow our government to protect the lives of Salvadorans and confront criminality head-on,” stated Ernesto Castro, congress president.
Bukele posted a video on Twitter of inmates being frog-marched through corridors and downstairs. As the murders piled up over the weekend, he ordered prisoners to have their food rationed to two meals per day and seized inmates’ mattresses.
Investigator Juan Pappier noted that El Salvador is vulnerable to potential human rights abuse. He said that the 30-day lockdown was “Very worrying, especially in a country where there are no independent democratic institutions.”
Despite El Salvador’s steadily falling homicide rate, the country recorded 1,140 murders last year, BBC reports.
In 2018, an individual was ten times more likely to be a victim of murder in El Salvador than in the U.S.
Statistics show that in 2015, the homicide rate in El Salvador was 103 per 100,000, or roughly one in a thousand people.
According to BBC, the 62 slayings mark the most violent 24-hour period since the end of the country’s civil war in 1992.