El Salvador's government boxed into a corner

Michael Busch criticizes the recent ruling of the Salvadoran Supreme Court in Telesur. Michael is Senior Editor at Warscapes magazine.

El Salvador risks sacrificing civil liberties and human rights in its war on terror against gangs.

With a single ruling this past month, El Salvador’s Supreme Court fundamentally changed the country’s war on organized crime.

The court issued a landmark decision Aug. 24 rejecting constitutional challenges to a 2006 terrorism law. Along the way, it redefined terrorism as any attempt to seize the state’s legitimate monopoly over the use of force, extended the “terrorist” designation to members of El Salvador’s various gangs, and made clear that any individuals or organizations associated with the gangs could find themselves facing charges of terrorism as well.

President Salvador Sanchez Ceren applauded the decision.

“The prosecution of crime will now be more effective,” Sanchez Ceren observed. “The gangs are now terrorists and all the force of the law will be applied against them.”

Official support for the ruling comes as El Salvador plunges ever deeper into crisis. The country witnessed an astonishing increase in violence this past month. In August alone, over 900 people were murdered — the steepest climb in killings experienced in El Salvador since the country’s civil war.

Despite government approval, the high court’s intervention will only bring more trouble to a country that has already suffered terribly.

I do fear that the laws will provide El Salvador's government with fewer tools with which to approach the country's gang violence. I'm pretty sure that everyone knows that this is not a "war" that can be won simply through more effective policing and prosecuting.