The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has ordered more than 1,000 soldiers and another 130 police to surround the community of Tutunichapa in the capital, San Salvador, to arrest suspected gang members living there.
«As of this morning, the Tutunichapa community in San Salvador is totally surrounded,» Bukele said on his Twitter profile, where he defended that the security agents have the mission of «extracting the criminals that still remain in this community.»
In the words of the Salvadoran president himself, Tutunichapa is «famous for drug trafficking» and for months has been a «bastion of crime» in El Salvador, a nation immersed in a state of emergency whose ultimate goal is to put an end to the violence and crime that several months ago brought the country to an extreme situation.
«All terrorists, drug traffickers and gang members will be removed from this community (…) Honest citizens have nothing to fear and can continue to live their lives normally», Bukele clarified.
At the end of March, when El Salvador registered 62 homicides in just one day, the country’s Legislative Assembly approved a state of emergency that has been extended over the months, culminating in the arrest of more than 57,500 alleged gang members.
This measure has earned the country, and specifically President Bukele, criticism not only from national opposition sectors, but also from a large number of human rights organizations, which warn of arbitrary detentions and lack of guarantees for prisoners.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
