The Congress of El Salvador approved this Tuesday, at the request of President Nayib Bukele, a penal reform to punish the dissemination of gang messages in the media with up to 15 years in prison.
The reform applies to those who “reproduce and transmit messages or communications originating or allegedly originating from such criminal groups that could cause anxiety and panic to the general population,” said the text, which establishes penalties of 10 to 15 years in prison.
It is also directed against those who “mark” their territories with acronyms, a practice that gang members use to intimidate and threaten with death those who report them to the authorities.
“When the Germans wanted to eradicate Nazism, they prohibited by law all Nazi symbols, as well as messages, apologies and anything that was aimed at promoting Nazism (...) Now we will do that with gangs,” Bukele justified on his Twitter account.
The penal reform, approved with 63 votes of deputies allied to the 84th ruler of the unicameral Congress, comes after El Salvador recorded 87 homicides from March 25 to 27.
The government attributes what happened to the gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, which, among others, have about 70,000 members in El Salvador.
Since then, a state of emergency has been in force in the Central American country to face a wave of violence generated by gangs. In ten days, some 6,000 gang members have been arrested, according to the latest official balance sheet.
The deputy of the ruling party Nuevas Ideas, Marcela Pineda, said that the approval of the reform seeks “not to restrict freedom of expression”, but to force “to be responsible in the messages that are disseminated to the population.”
Reform “gag”
The Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES) then issued a statement expressing its “concern” at a “clear attempt at censorship.”
The “gag” reform, as described by APES, “threatens to jail the media and journalists who report on a reality that the current administration of Bukele “seeks to hide”.
This is a “new tool to criminalize journalistic work,” the text added.
Shortly after Congress was approved, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Pedro Vaca, wrote on Twitter that “limits to freedom of expression cannot depend on the political anxiety of a situation.”
“In a crisis, human rights standards are much higher,” he said, without explicitly mentioning the newly disclosed measure.
The reform joins a series of changes to the Salvadoran penal code approved by Congress, under the control of the government, to deal with criminal gangs, considered “terrorists”.
On March 30, Congress passed a reform to increase the maximum penalty for gang membership from 9 to 45 years in prison, and established that minors who have reached the age of 16 and commit a crime while part of a gang will receive a prison sentence of up to 20 years, among other penal reforms.
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed concern over the Salvadoran government's handling of the wave of national violence, pointing to alleged “cruel treatment” against imprisoned gang members.
“We are deeply concerned about the series of measures recently introduced in El Salvador in response to the increase in gang killings,” High Commissioner's spokeswoman Liz Throssell said in a press release in Geneva.
El Salvador closed 2021 with a homicide rate of 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official data.
(With information from AFP)
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