El Salvador: Terrorism Law Misused Against Protesters

On July 2, a public protest in the Suchitoto municipality against a national plan to decentralize water distribution ended in a violent confrontation between police and protesters. Protesters blocked public roads and threw rocks at police, while police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. Police also alleged that protesters fired shots, although none of the press coverage of the demonstration mentioned that protesters were shooting.

Fourteen people were arrested and subsequently charged with “terrorism”: 10 of them were charged on the basis of alleged involvement in the roadblocks and rock-throwing, and three others on the basis of additional claims that they used firearms against police. (Charges against the remaining defendant, who allegedly interfered with police operations, were provisionally dropped.) An appellate court sustained the charges against the 13 defendants, but found that the firearms allegations were not even minimally supported by the evidence.

If convicted, the defendants will face 10 to 15 years in prison.

“Blocking roads and throwing rocks may well be crimes, but they’re not acts of terrorism,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch. “The Salvadoran government can legitimately prosecute protesters who break the law, but it should not misuse counterterrorism legislation against less serious crimes.”

Although the international community has not agreed on a precise definition of terrorism, it is widely understood that the term applies only to the most serious crimes of political violence, directed at instilling fear in the population in order to achieve a political goal: “the peacetime equivalent of a war crime,” in the words of United Nations Terrorism Prevention Branch expert A.P

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