El Salvador sees 62 gang kilings in a day. Congress approved president Nayib Bukele’s request to declare a state of emergency.
El Salvador is a Central American country with a high rate of gang violence.
On Saturday, 26 March 2022, 62 people died, which encouraged the nation to impose a state of emergency decree. Aside from this, the nation’s national team is facing Costa Rica in the Men’s World Cup qualifiers today.
News: El Salvador Gangs Dead – What Happened?
El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved a state of emergency on 27 March 2022 after multiple gang-related killings.
Friday saw fourteen people dead, while the next day saw 62. In two days alone, 76 humans lost their lives – in comparison, the whole month of February had 79 homicides. This kind of violence was absent from the country for years.
The murders of Saturday made it the worst 24-hour of violence since the 1992 civil war.
The country’s notorious street gangs have some connection to the recent homicides. The National Police reportedly detained five leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, who seemingly ordered the killings.
President Nayib Bukele announced his request to declare a state of emergency on Saturday through his social. The next day, congress approved it.
The decree restricts free assembly and inviolability of correspondence and communications. Moreover, the authorities can arrest without any warrant. The time limit is for 30 days, but it is extendable.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s report of December, the Bukele’s government had a secret truce negotiation with the gang leaders. Due to it, the tension between the two nations came into existence.
To all the accusations, the president had a sarcastic Twitter response. Moreover, he had denied similar allegations made by local news site El Faro back in August 2020.
Reportedly, Nayib’s administration provided financial incentives to Salvadoran gangs MS-13 and 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18). The goal was to keep the gang violence and homicide rate low.
And during the negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, the gang leaders also decided to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in the upcoming elections.
El Salvador Wiki
El Salvador is a Central American country.
Honduras borders the nation in the northeast, while Guatemala does it on the northwest and the Pacific Ocean on the south.
The capital city of El Salvador is San Salvador, which is also its largest city. The country’s estimated population is 6.8 million as of 2021.
The Human Development Index ranks it 124th out of 189 countries. Moreover, it has high poverty and gang-related violent crime rate. Among the Latin American nations, it has the second-highest level of income inequality.