El Salvador holds mass trial for 486 alleged members of notorious MS-13 gang

Posted by Naurgul@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 45 comments

Human rights groups have warned that the collective prosecutions violate due process and block defendants from accessing legal counsel

A Salvadoran court on Tuesday began a collective trial of 486 alleged gang members, in one of the biggest mass trials under president Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gang violence through controversial emergency powers.

Prosecutors say the charges against alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, span more than 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, including a weekend that was El Salvador’s bloodiest since its civil war.

The charges include homicide, femicide, extortion and arms trafficking.

Under the state of emergency that took effect in 2022 and has been repeatedly renewed, security forces have detained more than 91,500 people and Congress passed a decree allowing for mass trials.

Human rights groups have warned that the collective prosecutions violate due process and block defendants from accessing legal counsel.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Tuesday reiterated concerns over human rights violations through the long-extended state of emergency, and called for an end to its use as a crime-fighting strategy.

“This regime suspends the rights to a legal defense and to the inviolability of communications, and also extends administrative detention timelines,” the commission said in a statement.

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DenseCalligrapher219@reddit

At some point this honeymoon phase Bukele has with the people with El Salvador will come to an end when it's time to address the real reasons why this gang problem even existed like poverty, police corruption and broken political institutions that kept the gangs powerful in the first place.

And the grim reality is that Bukele has no real long-term vision to help El Salvador. He's ultimately just a power hungry corrupt politician and wannabe dictator with no real ideology and who flip flops back and worth whenever it serves his interests.

Keep in mind he tried to make Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador around 2021 and it became an utter failure because of course it was gonna be and it's what led to the gang crackdown as a desperate resort to gain public approval.

However even with that how's Bukele gonna handle when economy falters and people falling victim to police brutality and imprisonment now that they wield massive power thanks to himself giving them that?

Hugo Chavez came in as a populist icon against poverty and an apathetic attitude the government and rich elite had for the plight the Venezuelans faced. Yet he Instituted authoritarian policies that led to Venezuela becoming the oppressive dictatorship under Maduro where he's widely hated.

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fuckagriculture@reddit

yet another completely uneducated reply. The gang crackdown happened in 2016, not 2021. And it didn't happen cause of bitcoin lmfao. Also the gang problem originated in the US and was dumped onto El Salvador. I urge you to go read my other comment about all the stuff he is currently doing for the country, and in the future I suggest you at least fact check yourself before spewing miss information garned from other reddit comments.

Here's the comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/s/XGaylKiMY0

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2nd-penalty@reddit

This dude can't even get his timeline correct, reddit basement dweller lmao

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DenseCalligrapher219@reddit

So your response is to be a belligerent asshole where you didn't even try to post articles or sources for fact checking and then post link to your other comment "urging" me to read it...which is basically almost the same thing?

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2nd-penalty@reddit

"The real reasons why this gang problem even existed like poverty, police corruption and broken political institutions that kept the gangs powerful in the first place."

The first thing he did after he got into power was completely reforming the government from the top down, anyone that was blocking his way and supporting the gangs were ousted immediately, that means police corruption and broken political institution were fixed and reasons poverty existed was because of the gangs, children were afraid to go to school because they might be kidnapped, stores were closed because they were getting extorted to point they were forced to close, people can't even get to work without being forced to pay " taxes" to pass through gang territory

"And the grim reality is that Bukele has no real long-term vision to help El Salvador. He's ultimately just a power hungry corrupt politician and wannabe dictator with no real ideology and who flip flops back and worth whenever it serves his interests."

Has he taken bribes? How? Where? When? From who? What action has he taken that only benefitted him and his family and no one else? You can't answer that because you don't fucking know, so how is he dictator?

This fucking statement right here "Keep in mind he tried to make Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador around 2021 and it became an utter failure because of course it was gonna be and it's what led to the gang crackdown as a desperate resort to gain public approval."

You don't even know the timeline of events and yet you're so fucking confident, the gang crackdown happened before the crypto since it was his campaign promise to crackdown on gangs once he got elected

"However even with that how's Bukele gonna handle when economy falters and people falling victim to police brutality and imprisonment now that they wield massive power thanks to himself giving them that?"

Explain to me point by point why you think the economy is going to falter and fail? Where in the market trends does it point to El Salvador's economy faltering? And again let me remind you THE PEOPLE OF EL SALVADOR WANTED THIS

dryuhyr@reddit

God this is a mess. On one hand, it sounds like El Salvador has benefited hugely from this crackdown, and extreme measures needed to be taken to make the streets safe again.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine being some kid fallen in with an edgy crowd, convinced into getting a tattoo, and then arrested for the tattoo and being tried (and possibly executed/imprisoned for life) alongside murderers and horrifically evil gang members.

GerryAdamsSon@reddit

Imagine if the fascist dictator Bukele spent more money on addressing main cause of crime, poverty, instead of just imprisoning all of the poor people in the most inhumane fashion you can imagine and building the world's largest bitcoin farms or whatever he's doing with crypto

AblazeOwl26@reddit

Such a stupid reply

RenzoThePaladin@reddit

Do you seriously think these gangs would upend themselves once poverty is gone? Hell no. That would probably stop recruitment, but no one in that gang would willingly give up their power.

I would argue our focus on "just end poverty" arguements are the reason why no one takes us seriously when it comes to crime. All of our suggestions doesn't take away the threat of gangs when immediate security is one of humanity's priority instincts.

What I'm saying is, while addressing poverty does alleviate the issue, if it reaches the point like El Salvador then it's gonna take more than addressing poverty to get rid of the issue.

SuperKiller94@reddit

The point is to make it less appealing to join the gangs and also prosecute the gang members. Two things can be done at the same time

AdorableDonkey@reddit

The best way to make gangs less appealing to join is showing gang members being prosecuted and punished for the rest of their lifes

mrastickman@reddit

If that worked, then every crime should carry the death penalty, problem solved.

Guaire1@reddit

History has showed that harshness of punishment never makes crime rates go down, paradoxically, they can make violent crime go up

Herr_Tilke@reddit

Increasing the severity of punishment has essentially zero correlation to the incidence of a given crime.

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence

To effectively reduce crime, you need to create a strong foundation of deterrence (reducing the probability that a criminal could escape punishment for a crime), provide alternative economic solutions to would-be criminals, and encourage systems of local community support for individuals who are predisposed to violence.

Montana_Gamer@reddit

This is true... in America.

I don't at all support the way El Salvador is doing this, but it was a fascist crackdown that achieved the desired effect of destroying the gangs more fundamentally.

Paramilitary organizations and petty gang crime are not the same thing. El salvador is a blight on human rights, you can make plenty of good arguments against what is happening, but this isn't one of them.

2stepsfromglory@reddit

It is true everywhere. Look at the Philippines under Duterte. He turned the country into a police state where extrajudicial killings were common, leading to up to 30k people murdered during his war against drugs in a seven-years-long campaign that ended up leading nowhere.

You do realize that El Salvador's fascist crackdown didn't lead nowhere though, right?

There are good criticisms to make that aren't denying reality. I said America to the previous commenter because he was from America, I do not in any way mean to imply that only in America a fascist crackdown on violence would be ineffective.

Unless you expect for El Salvador to remain a dictatorship ad aeternum and for the crackdown to keep on going forever, this doesn't really showcase the fact that it's going tor remain an effective change without policies trying to end what is a systemic problem caused by cronic poverty.

That's a nice argument, wish it was the one originally made.

Maybe, but the murder rate per capita has dropped from the highest in the world to lower than the US in under 10 years, so... I think it worked pretty well

It absolutely is not the best way. Same way the death penalty doesn’t deter crime. Person will weigh the risks and decide that being able to provide for their family is worth the potential prison time

This is the problem with the left, spend years thinking and debating about the hypothetical perfect solution to solve crime and how to apply it while workers are being killed, young girls being raped and minors getting groomed to join gangs

The only way to solve an narco state is first getting rid of the criminals

History shows otherwise. We have tons of examples, even in recent years of cracking down hard failing to achieve anything. Abd quite the opposite really, only making everything worse.

What examples?

Thr philippines drug war went the way you wanted it to go. And it all amounted to nothing. Just a bigger pile of dead bodies, and no reduction in crime whatsoever

Did y'all miss the

"The only way to solve an narco state is >>>**first** getting rid of the criminals"

If you don't get rid of the criminals you can't do anything, narcostate isn't just petty crimes

I'm gonna talk about Rio de Janeiro, gangs have absolute control on the slums and they won't let the state intervene on their territory

"Education is key to lower crime" is true, but also you can't build schools that will be constantly closed because of faction wars or the crime boss not wanting kids to grow in their life

And thats what the philippines tried doing. And it didnt work.

Thats the point. Being "hard on crime" doesnt do shit, and never has done shit in the entirety of human history

What part of "you can't change shit if criminals rule your country" you still don't understand?

And what do you suggest? Do nothing while gangs get stronger, criminals keep murdering innocent people, extorting workers and raping young girls? Negotiate peacefully with people armed to the teeth that record themselves flaying people alive for fun?

The things you claim to not wprk are in fact the only ones proven time and time again to be useful.

You are proposing doing things that never in human history have helped, and in fact only worsen the situation, whilst rejecting those that have demostrably improved lives whenever they are tried.

The shining path in Perú did all you described and far worse, they werent beat by military strenght, but by measurably improving the lives of locals, which can be done despite your claims to the opposite

Zemledeliye@reddit

When your country has problems rivaling Mexico, with gangs, you can't afford to approach it with kid gloves. What you are suggesting works on relatively low crime developed nations.

In countries like El Salvador the only solution to crime of this scale is either mass incarceration or open military warfare.

What he suggested works best in any country. The philippine islands has a problem at the scale of El salvador, and after trying to solve it with military crackdowns the end result was tens of thousands of deaths, and no reduction whatsoever in crime ratesm

I really wish you people actually talked to the Salvadorans instead of debating the philosophy of gangs on the internet

Gangs were the cause of poverty, children weren't getting educated because they were afraid of going to school because they might be kidnapped or forced to join a gang as child soldiers, stores were getting extorted so much to the point they had to close, people having to paid tolls to walk through gang territory to get to whatever job that hasn't been extorted into non-existence, you have to pay extra just to live in gang territory, you can't even walk outside without a bunch of decoy items so that thieves who works for the gangs wouldn't steal anything actually important to you

There are some nations where poverty is the cause and gangs are the results but in El Salvador it's the opposite gangs are the cause poverty is the result

holypika@reddit

"just end poverty" is not simple lol. investor will not build factory when gangs rob them everyday. tourist will not come where gangs probably kidnapped them at night. you think its just "borrow from imf and give it to everyone" button?

Jakovit@reddit

Normally I'd be inclined to agree but in the context of El Salvador the gangs conveniently have very specific and identifiable tattoos. And if a person can be prosecuted for being a member of a "terrorist" group irrespective of any actual crimes they've personally committed, well... El Salvador has designated these gangs as "terrorist" groups. As has Guatemala, mind.

This is a seriously uneducated reply. Bukele is mass stimulating the economy there, he's building a new national hospital in the capital, he did a massive upgrade to the library, there's hundreds of infastructure upgrade projects, tons of tourist projects around the surfing areas, lots of roadwork being down, he provided water filtration systems to everyone in the country, he built out a mass transportation system via bus, like you can get across and to anything in the country by bus. Frankly the opinion on reddit of him is just wrong. btw, the only bitcoin ATM I saw was in a tourist area.

And what exactly is your solution to poverty there? The country got rocked by a politcal civil war caused by the US and then they got fucked by the US exporting gangs out of California. MS13 and Barrio 18 were both formed in LA and then the problem was dumped on El Salvador.

You should do some research before commenting like this, you're just pushing an illinformed opinion reddit made up cause they didn't like El Salvador accepting the US's ICE exports to their jail.

One-Employment3759@reddit

"If you become a monster to defeat monsters, that doesn't mean you are not now a monster" - me, just now

I was in El Salvador last November, people have visible tatoos. Less than in the US maybe, but people do have them, and they aren't on their own grounds for arrest. The tatoos gang members have are usually very indicative they are part of a gang, like MS13 tatooed directly across their face. Or in one of the towns I visited there was a specific type of shoes gang members wore and they would beat up or kill anyone else that wore them. Keep in mind, these things aren't for cops to classify off of, they are for the locals.

It's much more community oriented there, I don't know my neigbours names, but her family knows all of theirs within a kilometer radius, and they know another couple hundred from the nearest town, plus they know all the gossip about all of them lol. When it comes time for collection they're more than happy to point them out to the cops. My point being it's usually not the cops who pick them out on the street like what's happening with ICE in the US, it's much more they recieve a tip from someone and then they go around asking about them in the community. It's a better intelligence network for this purpose than anything the US has, and from what I've heard it works quite well. There wasn't any false arrests that her family knew about, everyone in their area that got arrested they already knew were part of a gang.

Hope this was able to provide more context

This is actually really interesting to hear, from someone who actually knows something of the situation. It’s good to hear that the round-ups are at least less thoughtless than they seem to be in western news.

What is public opinion like right now? Is it pretty unanimous? Are there any people who worry that the government is overreaching their power, or worrying that this is going too far?

Not really, people are all around were just very happy to have a positive change. Everyone seems optimistic, and my perspective was that everyone is more lively there than in Canada where I'm from. They just seem happier and more socially connected.

I didn't exactly go around questioning peoples political positioning, but when I was there a soldier (there's groups of 4 everywhere, in all the town centers, walking around the streets, on the side of highways, literally everywhere) accidently shot a civilian in the main square of the capital. It was all over the news, everyone was talking about it, but the backlash was towards the soldier himself for poor trigger disipline, and to the military for not training him well enough; not towards the government for putting soldiers in that square in the first place.

I would bet Bukele gets > 70% of the popular vote with zero election rigging, people honestly want even more government reach and involvment. I didn't see or hear single negative thing about him the entire time I was there. I did have a few people mention how bad it was before and how much better it is now thanks to his goverment, both young and old.

L_viathan@reddit

I'd love to hear the opinions of locals on this. I know people were unable to see family members for years and years even if they lived a few minutes away because they lived in territories controlled by different gangs. They needed something radical.

theKGS@reddit

Problem is I think the opinion of locals on this is, uh, going to be a bit unreliable, yeah?

If someone is exposed to gang crime it's something that you can immediately point at as, well, crime. It's obvious to outsiders.

If someone is wrongly imprisoned for crime then no one will really *know* that it was, in fact, wrong, so people aren't very likely to complain or even discuss it. After all it's one less criminal on the streets.

If my neighbour was arrested for, I dunno, murder, I wouldn't know if he was guilty or not so it wouldn't register, but if he was killed in a robbery or something I would know.

The locals love not having to be tortured, murdered, raped and kidnapped

I made some comments above from my experience there and talking to my girlfriend who grew up in a heavily gang controlled area in El Salvador. Hope they are helpul

My comment is based on some family that went there for vacation for two weeks a few years ago, shortly after the sweeping changes made. Their conversations were very positive in terms of how the locals felt about the changes.

Professional-Syrup-0@reddit

Ain’t this the same place the US has been deporting random people to? And now their future, and alleged guilt, will be determined as part of a “mass trial”?

Does justice come cheaper in bulk or how is all of that supposed to fit together?