“Jail or death”: Bukele warns young Salvadorans of consequences if they join gangs

the president of The Savior, Nayib Bukelecalled on parents this Thursday to warn their teenage children that joining gangs will lead to “jail or death,” one day after Congress quintupled the maximum prison sentence for belonging to those groups .

“To the parents. Show this video (of imprisoned gang members) to your teenagers, explain to them that joining the gang only has 2 ways out: jail or death”, the president said on Twitter.

Bukele posted on Twitter a video showing the harsh conditions of confinement that the prisoners currently have. gang members in prison, in the Exception status approved on Sunday by Congress at the request of the president and that will govern for a month to curb the violence of those gangs considered “terrorists”.

TO THE PARENTS:

Show this video to your teenagers, explain to them that joining the gang has only 2 ways out: jail or death.#GangWar https://t.co/uYsAEJ5aC2

– Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 31, 2022

In the images you can see gang members crowded into cells, without mattresses to sleep on and the voice of one of them is heard complaining about the decrease in food rations and the lack of implements to clean their place of confinement.

Members of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs in custody over the weekend in the Ciudad Barrios prison, El Salvador, after the increase in the number of homicides that occurred over the past weekend. (AFP). (-/)

The president recalled that since the state of emergency was declared, “food is rationed” to two meal times for the 16,000 imprisoned gang members. The gang Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18among others, have about 70,000 members in The Savior.

The emergency regime, which implies the restriction of civil liberties and the expansion of the powers of the police and the army in the control of public order, was adopted after a wave of violence that left 87 dead over the weekend.

On Wednesday, the government-controlled Parliament reformed the criminal code to increase the maximum sentence for gang membership from nine to 45 years in prison, amid a series of legal reforms.

The reform establishes that “whoever takes part in an illicit group, association or organization” such as gangs “will be punished with twenty to thirty years in prison”, and if they are “leaders” the prison sentence will be from 40 to 45 years.

Before the reform, gang membership was punishable by three to five years in prison, and if you were a leader, the penalty was six to nine years.

The Savior closed 2021 with a homicide rate of 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official data.

Source: Elcomercio