© Provided by Agencia EFE
San Salvador, Apr 4 (EFE) .- The Government of El Salvador added 1,450 soldiers to security work this Monday, which exceeds 17,000 elements of the Armed Forces, at a time when the country is under regime of exception.
“This day we are graduating 1,450 new soldiers who will be vital to the war against gangs,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said in an event broadcast on social media.
According to data from the Presidency, until the beginning of last February there were more than 16,000 soldiers “directly supporting the Territorial Control Plan.”
Bukele pointed out that all the new soldiers “will work directly in the Territorial Control Plan and in the war against the gangs.”
“We are going to continue increasing the Armed Forces” and “new graduations are coming,” Bukele said, recalling that his plan is to bring the number of Army elements to more than 40,000.
El Salvador completed a week under an emergency regime on Sunday after an escalation of murders that claimed the lives of more than 80 people.
Congress suspended, at the request of President Bukele and without any study or discussion, several constitutional rights, including the defense and inviolability of telecommunications.
The government has carried out massive arrests of suspected gang members, in what it has called a “war against the gangs,” as did its predecessors.
The security forces have captured 5,747 alleged gang members, while relatives of the detainees seek information and have reported attacks.
The president said during the military graduation that the gangs are the “armed wing” of humanitarian organizations, the international community and opposition parties.
On Sunday he also launched this accusation and published that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and journalists are also “partners of the gang members.”
“There is no doubt that their attacks will intensify as they feel that they lose their armed arm,” Bukele said.
The Human Rights Ombudsman, Apolonio Tobar, reported Monday that his office has received 67 complaints of “rights violations” under the country’s exceptional regime, most of them for arbitrary arrests.
(c) EFE Agency