Since 2022, thousands of children have been arrested in a mass antigang campaign in El Salvador, with many suffering abuse while in custody, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) revealed.
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| The entrance to a prison near Tecoluca, 74km southeast of San Salvador. Photo: El Salvador’s Presidency Press Office via AFP via aljazeera.com |
As part of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s pledge to weed out gangs from the once crime-ridden country, the arrest campaign which started in March, 2022, has created “severe human rights violations against children”, said the group in a new report on Tuesday documenting the abuses.
The HRW reports revealed, Police arrested more than 3,000 minors in “countless indiscriminate raids” often targeting those in “low-income neighbourhoods” known to be hotbeds of crime.
A lot of those arrested have “no apparent connection to gangs’ abusive activity”, ans were obviously arrested based on their physical appearance or socioeconomic background, it said.
