May 17, 2023
Salvadoran soldiers stand next to the road in Nuevo Concepción on May 17, 2023, after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced the deployment of more than 5,000 security forces to the area.
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said thousands of security forces surrounded a northern town on Wednesday to try to arrest those behind alleged gang killings of a police officer.
Bukele tweeted: "They will pay a heavy price for the murder of our heroes. About 5,000 members of the armed forces and 500 police officers were sent to the municipality of Nueva Concepción", he wrote, "in search of those responsible for this murder, as well as the entire gang structure and accomplices who are still hiding there," he wrote.
Police said the officer was attacked and other officers by gang members in Nueva Concepción while on patrol. "A terrorist was caught red-handed. We carry out an operation to identify other responsible parties," police wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
In 2022, Bukele, with the support of his New Ideas-controlled legislative assembly, declared a state of emergency, with constitutional rights, including freedom of assembly, suspended.
It has enabled security forces to arrest thousands of people suspected of being gang members while suspending their right to a legal defence and the right to be charged without conviction. Some 64,000 people have been arrested since the start of the emergency, some of whom were transferred to a mega prison earlier this year.
Similar security operations were carried out during the state of emergency, with troops surrounding areas considered dangerous to deal with gang members.
Salvador's criminal gangs can be traced back to those formed in the United States by Salvadoran immigrants fleeing the American Civil War in the 1980s. According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than 330,000 Salvadorans came to the United States from 1985 to 1990.
In the '90s, U.S. immigration authorities deported a large number of MS-13 gang members, many of whom came to the United States as children, and most of them returned to their home countries of El Salvador. Once there, these organizations move and take control of large swathes of the country, making life miserable for many law-abiding citizens.
But as human rights groups say innocent people have been swept away in Bukeley's anti-gang trawl and documented human rights abuses, the president's iron-fisted approach to crime continues to win him fans at home and abroad.
According to a poll last November by Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica, 89% of Salvadorans support their president.