President threatens prison for media sharing gang messages

SAN SALVADOR (AP):

El Salvador’s congress, pushing further in the government’s dramatic crackdown on gangs, has authorised prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from the gangs, alarming press freedom groups.

The vote late Tuesday was the latest in a flurry of legislative action against the gangs after 62 suspected gang killings on March 26 led President Nayib Bukele to get congressional approval for a state of emergency. Harsh measures against imprisoned gang members and increased prison sentences followed, as well as the arrests of some 6,000 suspected gang members.

But the newest law expands Bukele’s offensive to the press, another of his frequent targets.

“We consider these reforms to be a clear attempt at censorship of media,” the El Salvador Journalists Association said in a statement Wednesday. “Prohibiting journalism from reporting the reality in which thousands of people inhabiting these gang-controlled communities live ... will create an illusion that is not faithful to the truth.”

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) said the new law was equivalent to “criminalising the work of the media and journalists.”

IAPA President Jorge Canahuati called it “a legal gag, a direct and prior censorship of the media that will have profound consequences for Salvadoran society.”

“A country cannot block violence by censoring public opinion, since it is precisely in public debate that societies find the solutions to their problems,” Canahuati wrote.

The reforms passed with affirmative votes from 63 of the 84 lawmakers and went into effect when published Tuesday night in the official gazette.

The law says that “radio, television, written or digital media” would face 10 to 15 years in prison for “the reproduction or transmission to the general population of messages or statements originating or presumably originating from said criminal groups, that could generate anxiety and panic in the population”.

The measure also establishes prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for painting the sort of graffiti commonly used to mark gang territory in neighbourhoods across El Salvador.

Bukele has lashed out at the media, as well as non-governmental organisations and international bodies that have been critical of some of the measures taken against the gangs. He accuses them of siding with the criminals.