In a recent press conference, the Human Rights Working Commission for Historic Memory of El Salvador regretted that th country is the only nation in the region that has not signed the above-mentioned international legal instrument.

Such a protocol forbids the maltreatment by State agents of any person, and forces to take effective measures to prevent cruel treatment or inhumane or degrading sentences under its jurisdiction.

David Ortiz, legal collaborator with the Law Application Studies Foundation (LASF), warned that this problem should be seriously taken into consideration and approached from the education.

‘We have to educate ourselves, (the protocol) speaks, for example, of curricular changes in teaching about torture,’ pointed out Ortiz, who also stood for devices to monitor such maltreatment in the country.

According to the said Commission, during the armed conflict (1980-1992), there were thousands of cases of torture and the Salvadoran State did not take any measures of reparation to the victims, despite the constitutional endorsement.

‘El Salvador has over 30,000 prisoners and does not know exactly what is happening inside those prisons with the inmates,’ Miguel Montenegro, director of the Human Rights National Commission, warned.

jg/lcr/jcm/cmv