Watch: El Salvador moves thousands of alleged gang members to ‘mega prison’

New Delhi: El Salvador has arrested thousands of suspected gang members, as a part of its contentious operation on crime. The latest crackdown by the government has led to the overpopulation of Central American nation’s prisons.

“Today at dawn, in a single operation, we transferred the first 2,000 gang members to the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), “President Nayib Bukele tweeted.

Hoy en la madrugada, en un solo operativo, trasladamos a los primeros 2,000 pandilleros al Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT).

Esta será su nueva casa, donde vivirán por décadas, mezclados, sin poder hacerle más daño a la población.

Seguimos…#GuerraContraPandillas pic.twitter.com/9VvsUBvoHC

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 24, 2023

The move is part of a huge push to crack down on gang violence and murders in El Salvador.

In the video, tweeted by the president, prisoners can be seen wearing white shorts and heads shaved, running into cells. Many had tattoos of their respective gangs. The later part of the video clip shows the administration taking the prisoners to the CECOT in a cavalry.

The suspects are being shifted to the largest prison in the Americas, with a capacity for 40,000 people.

Some 63,000 presumed gang members have been rounded up since Bukele declared a state of emergency months ago, allowing arrests without warrants in the violence-plagued country.

Last year, El Salvador reported 495 homicides, the lowest figure in recent decades. The official number did not include at least 120 suspected gang members killed in confrontations with authorities.

Human rights organizations argue that innocent people have been caught up in the policy, including at least dozens who have died in police custody.

But Bukele's anti-gang push remains widely popular with Salvadorans, and the country's security minister told Reuters it would continue until all criminals are captured.

Built on Bukele's orders after he declared a "war" on gangs last March, the prison in Tecoluca, 74 kilometres (46 miles) southeast of the capital San Salvador, consists of eight buildings made of reinforced concrete.

Each one has 32 cells of about 100 square meters (1,075 square feet), designed to hold "more than 100" inmates, according to Public Works Minister Romeo Rodriguez.

Each cell has only two sinks and two toilets.

There are only 80 metal bunks for every 100 prisoners, and rights groups and observers have criticised the construction as a violation of incarceration standards.

While the prison is equipped with dining halls, exercise rooms and table tennis tables, they are exclusively for guards' use.

Prisoners will leave the cell only for legal hearings by videoconference, or to be punished in a windowless and unlit isolation cell.

In March 2022, President Bukele declared a "war on gangs" and enacted emergency measures that have since been extended multiple times.

It includes that arrests can be made without a warrant and detainees no longer have the right to a lawyer. Private communications of citizens can also be accessed by the government.

Since then, about 64,000 suspects have been arrested and murder reports fell about 57 per cent last year.

The emergency measures have been controversial as they limit some constitutional rights, such as allowing the security forces to arrest suspects without a warrant.

With inputs from agencies

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