In El Salvador, a small Central American state where a “war” has been waged against organized crime since the spring of 2022, an average of one person is now disappearing every day, non-governmental organizations announced Wednesday, citing data from prosecutors they studied.

The attorney general’s office counted 366 missing persons in the twelve months to May 31 this year, explained the Working Group for the Disappeared in El Salvador, a collective of NGOs.

El Salvador’s government, for its part, boasts that it has gone 650 days without “any” murders since President Naguib Bukele, who took office in 2019, declared “war” on gangs in March 2022.

After a series of killings that month, President Bukele declared a state of emergency, deploying the military at home and curtailing constitutional rights. Under the so-called “state of exception”, a huge maximum security prison was built and group trials were held.

The young head of state secured huge popularity thanks to an improved security situation and was re-elected with 85% of the vote in February — overriding the Constitution, which in theory banned consecutive terms in the presidency, by a ruling by a court appointed by his party, the faction New Ideas, which has an absolute majority in parliament.

But human rights groups have long pointed to the dark side of the “war” it is waging, notably the dozens of deaths in prisons and the arbitrary arrest and torture of suspects, including children.

President Bukele rejects the criticism and boasts that El Salvador is now “the safest country in the Western Hemisphere.”

According to Idalia Cepeda, a member of the collective, the 366 disappearances recorded in the last year is a number increased by almost 10%, if we take into account the estimates of the UN and the American Agency for International Development (USAID) for the previous year.

The Task Force on the Disappeared has created an online portal for the missing to take a more complete inventory and offer support to the families of the disappeared. He emphasized that he has no intention of replacing the work of any public service, but wants accurate information to be provided to citizens.

He also criticized the government’s human rights commissioner Andres Guzmán for a lack of transparency regarding the disappearances.

Neither Mr. Guzmán’s services nor the prosecutor’s office immediately responded when asked by the Reuters news agency for comment.