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Petro and Bukele clash on Twitter over prisons to lock up gangs in El Salvador

2023-03-02T03:46:36.489Z


The Colombian and Salvadoran presidents have argued on that social network about the methods used by the Government of the Central American country to reduce homicides


The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and his counterpart from El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, clashed on Twitter this Wednesday over the methods used by the Central American country in its vertical offensive against gangs.

The discussion began when Bukele published a video in which Petro is seen criticizing the methods of the Salvadoran president and calling a prison a "concentration camp" in which thousands of gang members are imprisoned, most of whom have been captured. during the exception regime in force for a year.

In addition, he makes a case for education as a way to reduce homicides.

In the video, recorded this Monday during the delivery of the El Ensueño technological headquarters, in the south of Bogotá, Petro is seen stating: “The president of El Salvador feels proud because he reduced the homicide rate starting, he says, of a subjugation of the gangs that today are in those jails, in my opinion, gruesome”.

Later on, he adds: "We managed to reduce, likewise, that rate of homicides, crime, violence, but not from prisons, but from universities, schools, spaces for dialogue, spaces for poor people to stop being poor."

The Salvadoran president responded, minutes later, after mentioning Petro: "The results weigh more than rhetoric."

He later wished that Colombia "actually managed to lower the homicide rates."

Shortly after, the Colombian extended the confrontation: "We went from 90 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 in Bogotá to 13 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022. We did not build prisons but universities."

And then he invited the Salvadoran to "compare experiences" in an international forum.

Bukele, without accepting the proposal of the Petro forum, appealed to irony and a figure to settle the controversy: “Since 1993?

30 years... Did you rule 30 years?

Bogota?

Aren't you the president of Colombia?

Our experience: From more than 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, we are now in single digits.

And the reduction was rapid, because the dead do not recover.

The confrontation from their profiles, in which they are usually very active, occurs a month after Bukele inaugurated the so-called Confinement Center against Terrorism, which he himself has called "the largest prison in America", and where they have been transferred. about 2,000 gang members arrested.

The Salvadoran government's offensive against the gangs has been criticized by human rights organizations, which accuse the Executive of using torture and other arbitrary methods for that purpose.

On February 1, Bukele shared a video on his Twitter account in which he was seen giving a tour of the prison, which was built in seven months.

In it you can see the places where the imprisoned gang members would serve their sentence and, among other details, the rooms where sunlight does not enter, to which they will be assigned in case of punishment.

El Salvador has managed to go from being the most insecure country in the world to the safest country in the Americas.



How did we do it?



Putting criminals in jail.



There is space?



Now yes.



Will they be able to give orders from inside?



No.



Will they be able to escape?



No.



A work of common sense.

pic.twitter.com/WXiYohGkd4

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 2, 2023

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-02

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