El Salvador: Children’s Rights NGOs Report Child Arrests
Arrests in El Salvador, Aug, 2024 Photo: @fafosoler2
August 8, 2024 Hour: 9:03 pm
“Have committed the crimes of arbitrary acts and breach of duty by failing to respond to the deaths of children in prisons and minors who have been orphaned by the capture or death of their parents”.
Lawyers from non-governmental organizations asked the Attorney General of El Salvador to investigate a public body for children for “not responding” to deaths of minors registered in prisons, in the context of the implementation of an emergency regime.
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Lawyer Rudy Joya, of the Human and Community Rights Defense Unit of El Salvador (Unidehc), explained to a journalist that it is a criminal notice delivered at one of the offices of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Salvador against the National Council for Early Childhood, Childhood and Adolescence (Conapina) and its director, Linda de Moran.
He pointed out that Conapina and Moran “have committed the crimes of arbitrary acts and breach of duty by failing to respond to the deaths of children in prisons and minors who have been orphaned by the capture or death of their parents”.
Joya added that in September last year organizations submitted to the Conapina a letter for it “to take action on this situation”, but it said that “there was no action”.
“We do not observe, since the letter submitted in September 2023, that the competent authorities, the governing body that has to ensure the protection of the rights of children and adolescents in this country (…) have given a response, nor have they investigated”, he added.
According to lawyer Ivania Cruz, also a member of Unidehc, “at least 918 minors are in deplorable conditions in prisons with their mothers, detained by the regime”.
The humanitarian organization Cristosal recently revealed, after an investigation, that four minors have died in prisons in El Salvador.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), meanwhile, revealed in a report that the Conapina told the US authorities that 3,319 children were detained between March 2022 and December 2023, with 841 remaining in custody as of January 2024, of which 262 were in pre-trial detention and 579 are still serving their sentences.
According to official figures, since March 2022, more than 81,100 arrests have been recorded under the emergency regime, including more than 7,000 people who have been released on parole.
Autor: OSG
