Salvadoran President Vetoes Legislative Assembly’s Civil War Crimes Law

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sits in his office. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Salvadoran Congress approved a new civil war crimes law on February 27, but  Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele vetoed it the next day after a strong outcry against the law from human rights groups.

The new law would have established a protocol for handling justice and reparations for crimes against humanity during the 12-year civil war that lasted from 1980 until 1992. During the long period of conflict between left-wing rebels and the United States-funded Salvadoran military, 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 went missing. The Legislative Assembly voted to approve the law, which proposed the opening of a National Council for Reparations, the creation of a national registry of victims, and the integration of civil war history into public school curriculums, among other allegedly reformative measures throughout El Salvador.

However, human rights groups and victims of the war were quick to reject the legislation, dubbing it a disguise for amnesty, since more than 80 percent of the crimes were committed by the Salvadoran government, according to UN reports.

The new law would have allowed age or health concerns to commute a person’s sentence, limited the time for investigating and developing a case to one year, and narrowed the period during which charges must be raised against a perpetrator to ten years. Given the gravity of human rights abuses and the decades that have passed since the civil war, these limitations would have made it much more difficult for victims and their families to seek justice. In addition, the United Nations recommends that crimes against humanity should never entail a statute of limitations, a recommendation the new law would have ignored.

"In a law of reconciliation, the victims are central. That is why it is important to establish a clear methodology for their participation. And that hasn't happened,” said Antonia Urreloja, expert at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Claudia Paz y Paz, director of Costa Rica-based human rights organization Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) for Central America and Mexico, affirmed that all these reforms would have made it more difficult to develop a strong case against any perpetrator.

Acknowledging the protests against the “amnesty law,” President Bukele issued a veto on February 28. "This is a law that does not even meet international parameters,” he explained. “Not only is it unconstitutional and violates international human rights conventions, but it is a mockery and infamy against Salvadorans."

Since the Salvadoran Congress requires 56 of 84 possible votes to override a veto, and because only 44 lawmakers had voted in favor of the law before it arrived at the president’s desk, chances are slim that the legislative body will reverse the president’s decision.