No.
“The Special Military Security Brigade is responsible for border protection and Military Police functions,” says Article 63 of the Organic Law of the Armed Forces. “In the latter function, it shall have jurisdiction over all members of the Branches and Commands of the Armed Forces.”
This provision, approved in May 1994, is still in force.
A few days ago, we Salvadorans saw images of a wall of shields with the words “Military Police” as officers participated, along with other security forces, in the dispersal of a peaceful demonstration. Some of the participants were arrested.
In El Salvador, there is a military police force. And there should not be.
In 2013, the Constitutional Chamber was emphatic in defending “the separation of national defense and public security functions.” According to the magistrates, the National Civil Police (PNC) is tasked with “the investigation, prevention, and, ultimately, repression of threats or violence against society.” The police must “ensure the tranquility and peace of the population in order to keep it safe from crime and disorder, with the existence of a legal order that protects its rights and essential goods.”
The Armed Forces are another expression of the use of public force, but —according to Article 212 of the Constitution— for different purposes: to defend the sovereignty and integrity of Salvadoran territory. According to Article 168, the Armed Forces may only assume a public-security role in exceptional cases, when all ordinary means have been exhausted.
Salvadoran history shows why it is a bad idea to give police functions to the military. El Salvador has long been scarred by abuses and human rights violations committed by the Armed Forces, abuses for which the 1992 Peace Accords stripped them of public security functions.
Chapter one of the Accords established that the National Civil Police “shall be under the direction of civilian authorities” and that the Police and the Armed Forces “shall be independent and attached to different ministries.” It also eliminated the National Guard and Treasury Police, incorporating their personnel into the Army. Chapter two added that the PNC “shall be the only armed police force with national jurisdiction.”
The Accords, more than three decades ago, were clear: The only police force will be the PNC. The 1991 constitutional reform, which created the Police and removed the Armed Forces from public security, is the product of those peace negotiations; one cannot be read without the other.
That is why, when in 2013 the Constitutional Chamber ruled against the 2011 appointment of General David Munguía Payés and General Francisco Salinas as as minister of Public Security and director of the PNC, respectively, the magistrates interpreted that one of the ends of the Peace Accords was “to put an end to the structural militarization of public security or, in other words, to ensure the prohibition of entrusting military commanders with the leadership of the state police institution.”
The fact that a Military Police force appears in the text of the Organic Law of the Armed Forces, as well as on the streets and in the barracks of El Salvador, is an aberration. Its existence violates the Constitution and the Peace Accords.
Daniel Olmedo holds a Master's Degree in Human Rights from the Carlos III University of Madrid and a Master's in International and European Law from Radboud University in the Netherlands.