El Salvador vows harsh response after slaying of police officer
Thousands of soldiers and police have surrounded the city of Nueva Concepcion after the murder of a police officer.
The government of El Salvador has sent thousands of soldiers and police officers to a small town in a show of force after a police officer was killed by an alleged gang member.
More than 5,000 soldiers and 500 police surrounded the northern city of Nueva Concepcion on Wednesday, with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele saying they would seek those responsible.
“They will pay a heavy price for our hero’s assassination,” Bukele said in a Twitter post, adding that troops would search for “the entire gang structure and associates still hiding in that place.”
The Bukele government has cracked down on the country’s gangs across the country over the past year, drawing broad public support but raising concerns about systematic human rights violations.
The government declared a “state of emergency” in March 2022, suspending key civil liberties after gangs were blamed for a spate of killings.
The government has since extended the order to maintain those powers 14 times, and human rights groups and media outlets have documented cases of torture, disappearances, and innocent people being arbitrarily detained in prison.
Neighborhoods once dominated by gangs have become safer for residents, who have largely expressed support for the government’s heavy-handed policies after years of gang violence and exploitation.
But some experts and human rights groups have questioned how sustainable the public safety gains will prove to be in the long run.
Before the murder is committed, an agente de nuestra @PNCSVby parts of pandilleros that have an encuentran and algunos sectores de nuestro país, escondidos, huyendo del Régimen de Excepción…
From this madrugada, establecimos un cerco de seguridad alrededor del municipio de… pic.twitter.com/6r8BxuLBDb
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) May 17, 2023
Wednesday’s troop deployment in Nueva Concepcion is not the first time the government has engaged in a major show of force. Last October, 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded the town of Comasagua, about 30 km southwest of the capital San Salvador, detaining 50 people in two days.
And in December, the government sealed off the Soyapango neighborhood, a suburb of the capital, with about 10,000 soldiers and police as government troops moved through the area to detain suspects.
More than 68,000 suspects have been detained since last year as part of the ongoing crackdown, many of whom have been transferred to a new “megaprison” opened in February, designed to hold around 40,000 people in total.