The foundations of the huge prison have barely been poured. Nevertheless, the building will be completed in just 60 days, El Salvador’s president promises on Twitter and uses the hashtag #krigenmotgjängene. In the so-called “Detention Center for Terrorism”, the prisoners must be completely isolated from the outside world, he writes. This photo was published by the authorities in El Salvador on March 28 this year and shows members of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs in prison. Photo: AFP – It will be the world’s largest prison, says Stener Ekern, professor emeritus at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo. Investigations have shown that it is not possible to add water and sewage to far smaller prison buildings in the same place, says Adrian Bergmann, peace researcher at the University of El Salvador. – Now they say that the prison will house 40,000 inmates because that is the number they need, says Bergmann. El Salvador’s president is known to use Twitter a lot. On July 24, he published a video of the construction work of the huge prison. Details of the construction plans are being kept secret. – We know very little about the construction, other than which construction company got the contract, says journalist Daniel Valencia in El Salvador and adds: – The prison is a symbol of the injustice and violence committed against the citizens by Bukele’s government. According to the president, the prison will be set up at record speed in Tecoluca, an hour and a half from the capital San Salvador. Photo: JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters Mass incarceration last four months It started when President Nayib Bukele, who was elected in 2019, declared war on the gangs. He wanted to bring down the extreme murder rates in the small Central American country, the size of Nord-Trøndelag. But when the notorious gangs executed 87 people in a short weekend at the end of March this year, the cup ran over. On Sunday morning, President Nayib Bukele had imposed a state of emergency. The president, who previously described himself as “the world’s coolest dictator” on Twitter, repealed five sections of the constitution. President Nayib Bukele is a very controversial president. He wants to imprison all gang members in the country. Photo: JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters Prisoners who were already imprisoned should not see “a single ray of sunshine” as punishment, he wrote on the messaging service. Then the mass incarceration began. Over 48,000 arrested 48,207 people have since been detained, according to figures presented by the Salvadoran Ministry of Justice on Friday. The state of emergency is in its fifth month. 1,500 people can quickly be caged in in one day. People allegedly connected to the gangs in El Salvador have been put in prison without access to a lawyer. No one knows if the prisoners are being given enough food and deaths have already been reported. Photo: JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters – The only charge most have is gang membership. Many thousands have nothing to do with the case. They are locked up without law or judgment and without access to defenders, says researcher Adrian Bergmann at the University of El Salvador. Being a member of a gang, without having done anything criminal, is punishable by up to 45 years in prison, says the researcher. The Norwegian peace researcher Adrian Bergmann has lived in the capital San Salvador for a number of years. He believes it is particularly heartbreaking that ex-gang members, who have managed to get on in life, are now back in prison. – The government has also made changes to the Criminal Procedure Act which opens up the possibility of an unlimited period of detention when someone is accused of gang membership, murder or extortion. It is reported that family members, neighbors and poor people are also caged inside. Journalist Daniel Valencia is very concerned about developments in his home country of El Salvador. Journalists now risk up to 15 years in prison for revealing information about the gangs, he says. Around 3,000 incarcerated are not gang members, according to Salvadoran journalist Daniel Valencia, who has worked for the independent online newspaper El Faro. – There are workers, pensioners, young people and people with disabilities. The massive arrests have been made by a police force that does not appear to have done any investigation beforehand. It seems arbitrary, says Valencia. Thousands of families have been torn apart after Bukele decided to mass incarcerate people in El Salvador. So far, over 48,000 people have been put in prison since March. Photo: MARVIN RECINOS / AFP Possible famine in the prisons Around 50 inmates have been reported dead, according to journalist Valencia. Several as a result of violence, others due to lack of food. Little is known about the treatment inmates receive in prison. Journalists now risk up to 15 years in prison for revealing information about the gangs, he says. – Even the Red Cross has refused to support the prisons with humanitarian aid and has withdrawn, says Adrian Bergmann at the University of El Salvador. – Nor does the UN have information about the situation in the prisons. It is clear that deaths occur, but the deaths do not necessarily come so quickly. Many are concerned about how the authorities will feed two percent of the adult population, who are now in prison. The photo was sent out by the presidential office on 28 March this year in connection with the president’s war on the gangs. Photo: AFP Most incarcerated in the world No country in the world can compare to El Salvador in terms of the number of inhabitants put behind bars, with its 1,100 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants. That amounts to around 86,000 people in prison in a country with 6.4 million inhabitants. 2 percent of the entire adult population is locked up. The USA is second on the list with 639 people per 100,000 last year. Conditions for the inmates in El Salvador were already difficult. Now the number of inmates has doubled without the state having allocated more money for prison operations. Photo: JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters – It is difficult to imagine such a large proportion of the population locked up. Not even a rich country like Norway can subsidize such a large share, much less a poor country like El Salvador, says Bergmann. Despite the fact that the number of inmates in the country has more than doubled, the budget for the prison authorities is the same, according to the Norwegian researcher living in the country. – There is a desperate search for food and medicine. They have to keep twice as many alive, says Bergmann. El Salvador has also greatly increased its debt burden. In March, the country’s total debt was 24 billion dollars, according to Reuters. The researcher believes that the many thousands of inmates will be imprisoned until the next presidential election in early 2024. A burning gorilla shows students’ resistance to the state of emergency introduced in El Salvador this week. The state of emergency has lasted since March. Photo: JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters – It is possible that he will release gang members in the months before, but Bukele has tired of negotiating with the gangs. He has put everyone in jail so that they do not affect his support before the election. – Solid support in the people Several hundred women and men took to the streets in the capital this week to get back what they believe to be wrongfully imprisoned boyfriends, sons and fathers. “Freedom for Mario. He is innocent” read one of the many posters. Outside the prisons, women and children stand and try to track down their loved ones. A woman demands that innocent prisoners be released. Many relatives do not know which prison their family members are in. Photo: JESSICA ORELLANA / Reuters But the family members do not currently belong to the majority. Polls show that 85 per cent support the state of emergency in order to jail the gang members, says Stener Ekern at the University of Oslo. – The president can do this with solid support from the people because the population is fed up after 20 years of terrorism and war, they hate the gangs, says Professor Ekern, who has recently visited the country. – A taxi driver believed that the gangs should be given a separate county with closed borders. It is a deep and heartfelt hatred. People don’t care how the inmates are doing. Researcher Adrian Bergmann, on the other hand, believes that mass incarceration will become more and more unpopular over time. – More people want friends and neighbors who have been thrown in prison without having anything to do with the gangs. It is questionable whether many do not think that it has gone too far. It is extremely heartbreaking to see that people who have managed to get out of the gang are imprisoned again, he says. Prisoners themselves must ensure that they have toilet paper and clothes in the prisons. Relatives come here with doro rolls for their loved ones. Photo: JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters Bringing down the death rate The two largest gangs, called Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), have ruled in divided territories and demanded money and “taxes” for passing, security and shop operations. For example, workers have to get off the bus and walk around areas controlled by a gang other than their own neighbourhood. If not, they will be killed. Back in 2015, an average of 18 people were killed in the country per day. 6,500 people were killed that year, sending El Salvador to the top of the list of the world’s countries with the most murders per capita, it was above both Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the president boasts that the country has days without a single murder. Members of the gangs Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) have been at war with each other in El Salvador for decades. The state is at war against both. Several of the members have distinctive facial tattoos, such as this man, who was charged with the murder of three policemen in June this year. Photo: MARVIN RECINOS / AFP – It’s a dictatorship In three years in power, President Bukele has unconstitutionally dismissed the Supreme Court and the country’s attorney general. After he became president, he has been responsible for a sharp increase in the military budget. Stener Ekern is professor emeritus in anthropology at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights. He has recently visited El Salvador and says that people are mostly satisfied with the president’s mass incarceration. – It is a dictatorship, there is no doubt about it, says Stener Ekern. Journalists are afraid and publish articles critical of the regime with their lives at stake, he says. – Democracy is gone and human rights are gone. The individual’s rights are gone. This is very serious.
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The world’s largest prison with room for 40,000 inmates is being built here – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
