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Gangs in El Salvador are threatening to order a second round of transportation boycotts in the Central American country.
Information circulating on social media signals that gangs are planning to force a transport stoppage this coming Monday, teleSUR correspondent in El Salvador Adriana Sivori reported.
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Video: El Salvador: pandillas amenazan con paro de transporte el 10 de agosto http://t.co/K9vJTi2hX7
— Adriana Sivori (@SivoriteleSUR)
August 6, 2015
“El Salvador gangs threaten transport strike for August 10.”
The impending forced boycott comes after gangs attacked a bus on Wednesday, killing four people and injuring seven, while separately they are believed to have killed a police officer, a woman and her two children.
The surge in murders at the hands of gang members follows a forced transportation strike last week that brought the capital city San Salvador to a halt for four days when gang members threatened drivers who did not follow the gang-mandated a work-stoppage with violence.
Gangs forced the strike to put pressure on the government to negotiate reduced punishments for gang members, but government officials have repeatedly reiterated that they will not enter in dialogue with gangs.
Authorities have called the forced boycott a “sabotage” of public transportation.
“Nothing is going to stop El Salvador,” attorney general Luis Martínez told El Salvador's Prensa Grafica. “El Salvador will carry on with its decent, hardworking, honest people, who are the immense majority.”
A soldier takes a picture of a bus that was attacked by suspected gang members in San Pedro Perulapan, El Salvador August 5, 2015. | Photo: Reuters
While security forces detained several members of the gang Barrio 18 in connection with the transportation boycott last week, six gang leaders escaped the Zacatraz maximum security prison outside the capital a few days ago.
Official statistics estimate that over 10 percent of El Salvador's population of about 5 million, or over 500,000 people, are members of a gang.
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Authorities attribute the country's skyrocketing murder rate to violence between rival gangs. In the first half of 2015, El Salvador recorded 2,865 homicides, spiking dramatically compared to the same period last year and reaching a new height of nearly 16 deaths per day.
The ruling FMLN government of President Salvador Sanchez Ceren has condemned the recent transportation chaos as a part of a larger right-wing campaign to destabilize the government.
