El Salvador fights gangs by destroying members’ tombstones

SANTA TECLA, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s governing administration took its endeavours against the country’s potent road gangs to a further amount by sending inmates into cemeteries to wipe out the tombs of gang users at a time of yr when people ordinarily go to their loved ones’ graves.

Armed with sledgehammers and pry bars, inmates broke up tombs marked with “MS,” of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, in a San Salvador suburb Tuesday.

Santa Tecla Mayor Henry Flores explained the crews experienced ruined nearly 80 tombstones in the municipal cemetery and erased gang-linked graffiti. “Our prepare is that there is no graffiti so the persons truly feel protected,” Flores mentioned.

El Salvador has been less than a condition of exception given that late March. President Nayib Bukele requested and obtained the exclusive powers, which suspend some constitutional rights, soon after gangs killed 62 men and women across the nation in a single working day.

Due to the fact then, authorities have arrested a lot more than 56,000 persons for alleged gang ties. Nongovernmental companies have tallied quite a few thousand human rights violations and at the very least 80 in-custody deaths of men and women arrested for the duration of the condition of exception.

Authorities had already painted about or taken out gang graffiti that utilised to be noticeable in neighborhoods during El Salvador, but destroying gang members’ tombs was a new move. It came as some Salvadorans visited cemeteries for the Day of the Lifeless.

Santa Tecla sits beside the funds San Salvador and has very long been a stronghold of the Mara Salvatrucha gang.

Because of to the COVID-19 pandemic, gatherings in cemeteries experienced been restricted till this 12 months. This 7 days, extra men and women arrived to pay a visit to gravesites although law enforcement and soldiers patrolled cemeteries.

“There’s a whole lot of joy becoming capable to pay a visit to relations who have died,” said Juan Escamilla, who introduced bouquets to a relative’s grave Wednesday. “Before it was normal to see gang members within the cemetery, but nowadays there is no risk.”

Osiris Luna, the head of El Salvador’s prisons, claimed by means of Twitter that prisoners and law enforcement had destroyed tombstones of various gangs in cemeteries in Santa Tecla and Colón, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of the money.

Luna, who referred to gang members as “terrorists,” explained they did not have earned “any recognition, that is why we ruined every single trace of these teams. In this state, the gangs no more time have a spot.”

Later on, the Nationwide Law enforcement mentioned on social platforms that people of Candelaria de la Frontera in Santa Ana department in western El Salvador reported that a grave in that city experienced a tombstone that referenced the MS-13 gang, so law enforcement instantly went there and ruined it.