Ciudad Arce (El Salvador), (EFE).- The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced this Wednesday that “fences in the big cities” of the Central American country will be put in place to “extract the remaining members of the gangs” and continue with “war on gangs”.
El Salvador has been under an emergency regime since the end of March, in force for 8 months and suspending various constitutional rights, after a wave of murders that claimed the lives of more than 80 people in three days.
As part of the state of emergency measure, more than 58,000 gang members and people linked to these gangs have been captured, according to the Salvadoran president.
However, the president stressed this Wednesday afternoon that “there are still gang members and we have to go and extract them”, for which he also announced the launch of phase five of the Territorial Control Plan, which includes at least 14,000 soldiers. for measurement.
“Phase five is the phase of extracting the criminals who still remain in these communities. There are still gang members and we have to go and extract them.
President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele
According to the Salvadoran president, it is a question of “encircling the big cities and carrying out the process of extracting the terrorists who are inside these cities without giving them the possibility of escaping”.
Said “fences” will begin to be put in place “in the coming days”, .
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele
The president stressed that “he experienced” the fence put in place at the beginning of October last in the central town of Comasagua, where more than 2,000 soldiers were deployed, after a homicide was committed in this area.
The Salvadoran president launched at the beginning of his mandate in 2019 the Territorial Control Plan, to which he attributes the drop in homicides and of which five phases are already supposed to be implemented, to curb the sources of financing of the gangs and take back the controlled areas. for these bands.
However, the general population is unaware of an official document that details how to address the phenomenon of gangs on the part of the state.
“Happy people” with exceptional regime
Bukele also assured that “people are not afraid of the emergency regime” and that “95% of the population approves of it”.
“People are not afraid of the emergency regime, as some international media say (…) as some NGOs say. People are not afraid of the emergency regime as some powerful countries say, which instead plunged us into misery and crime,” he said.
He pointed out that “people are happy with the emergency regime, the war against gangs and we don’t say that, we can see it on the streets” and added that “95% of the population approves of our work of security”.
“The greatest measure approved in the world is this (exception regime).”
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele
Una encuesta del Instituto Universitario de Opinion Pública (Iudop), de la Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), said that the mitad of los Salvadoreños says that the regimen of exception “no resolverá el problema” de las pandillas, pero el 75.9% aprueba the measurement.