SAN SALVADOR (Agencies): Alexander Eduvay Guzman Molina’s daughters want to know when he will be coming home. They have not seen their father, a 45-year-old teacher, since he was arrested by Salvadoran police on March 27 during the country’s continuing state of exception, which authorities say aims to crack down on gangs and gang-related violence.
Guzman Molina has been accused of “illicit association”, but a relative told Al Jazeera the charges are unfounded. Now, the family fears for his safety, as Guzman Molina has missed his physical therapy appointments for a bone fracture in his hand and never made it to a doctor’s appointment after being told he was vulnerable to suffering a stroke. “I’m worried that they aren’t giving him medical attention and that something could happen to him,” his relative, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from authorities, told Al Jazeera. “They [authorities] are doing horrible damage, because behind him is a wife, children, mom, dad and siblings, who are all suffering terribly because of this situation.”
Thousands of Salvadoran families are experiencing the same anxiety after the government arrested more than 24,000 people since the state of exception began on March 27. The government says it is arresting “terrorists” and gang members to take control of the streets after a spike in homicides from March 25 to 27 left more than 80 people dead. But family members say some of the people arrested have no gang ties and have been caught up in a policy that is targeting innocent Salvadorans.
Some wives, mothers and other relatives spend days outside prisons waiting for a sign of their loved ones, whom the authorities in most cases have shared little to no information about. Others write desperate messages on social media, tagging journalists and authorities in hopes someone will help them reunite with their relatives. “Start of a new week and we are without knowing absolutely ANYTHING about my brother. This nightmare repeats itself in many homes of honest Salvadorans who have been detained illegally,” wrote Fernanda Alvarado on Twitter on May 2. Her brother, Jose Luis Iglesias Alvarado, 30, was detained while working as a food delivery driver on April 26. “This situation causes despair, anguish and everything that can be felt by a human being,” Iglesias Alvarado’s mother, Alma Ruth Alvarado Peralta, told Al Jazeera. “We have to be strong for him and we have to prove his innocence.” The trauma currently experienced by the families of detainees echoes past periods of state violence in El Salvador.
During a civil war between left-wing rebels and the US-backed Salvadoran government from 1980 to 1992, more than 70,000 people were killed and 5,000 disappeared. Student leaders and activists were taken off the streets and never seen again, and babies were stolen from their families and put up for illegal adoption. “These are clearly mass arrests without any investigation and that are intended to generate an impact of terror in the population,” said Leonor Arteaga, a Salvadoran lawyer and director of the Impunity and Grave Human Rights Violations programme at the Due Process of Law Foundation, which promotes the rule of law in Latin America.
“We’ve seen this before in the armed conflict,” Arteaga told Al Jazeera. A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Salvadoran rights group Cristosal documented a trend of arbitrary detentions in the latest wave of arrests. The groups called some of them “enforced disappearances” because of the lack of information and contact with families. An individual can be considered disappeared when “state officials (or someone acting with state consent) grabs them from the street or from their homes and then deny it, or refuse to say where they are”, according to Amnesty International.
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