El Salvador: News & Updates

Practicing journalism in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the persecution of independent media outlets by neo-populist rulers of different stripes, intolerant of criticism. The union of Guatemalan journalists and the reporter’s family say the arrest is a clear example of political persecution as a result of the investigations into corruption and mismanagement in the Giammattei administration published by the newspaper, which was founded in 1996. “I definitely believe it is a case of political persecution and harassment, and of violence against free expression and the expression of thought,” Ramón Zamora, son of the editor of elPeriódico who has been imprisoned since his arrest, told IPS from Guatemala City.

IRTF's solidarity with the people of Central America began in El Salvador 41 years ago. Salvadorans fought long and hard to build democracy and far too many paid for it with their lives. Three decades since the end of the civil war, the struggle continues. Here we share an urgent action from our friends at CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), which echoes what we heard on August 5 in Cleveland from Leslie Schuld of the CIS (Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad). Thank you for taking a couple of minutes to read this and for taking the click action.

In El Salvador, testimony from police officers and conflicting statistics on mass graves are leading critics to question if homicides in the Central American country are being fully reported as access to official information tightens. Documents from El Salvador's Institute of Legal Medicine, seen by Reuters, show authorities recovered 207 bodies from mass graves over two and a half years, between June 2019 and February 2022. In contrast, documents from the Attorney General Office show 158 bodies recovered in over three years, between January 2019 and February 2022 – a difference of 49. Human rights groups and family members of homicide victims say they are alarmed by this discrepancy. The confusion is partly caused by restrictions to previously public information across government agencies under President Nayib Bukele, they said.

Yesenia Portillo, a Salvadoran American activist raised in Los Angeles, said there is a perception that Salvadorans in the U.S. are overwhelmingly supportive of Bukele. But Portillo said there are many in the U.S. who don't support him, and are “becoming more vocal about their concerns, especially as more political exiles arrive in the U.S." Portillo said that in El Salvador, there is more opposition to Bukele than polls reflect. “Feminists, LGBTI+, labor, and environmental organizations in El Salvador have been taking to the streets by the tens of thousands to criticize his policies and that often doesn’t get highlighted,” she said.

On July 26, relatives of Salvadorans unfairly arrested during the current State of exception marched in front of the Human Rights Office and later went to the Legislative Assembly with a letter for the congresspeople. No representative spoke to them. This is not the first time that these people march for their families. They did it on July 19 and, as reported by Gato Encerrado, Josselyn Palacios, one of the most visible attendees found herself receiving the attack from social media managed by allies of the Salvadoran government.

On Wednesday, July 20, the U.S. State Department released an update of the so-called “Engel List”. The document is a list of “individuals who have knowingly engaged in acts that threaten democratic processes or institutions, engaged in significant corruption, or obstructed investigations of such acts of corruption in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.” The list sanctions corrupt individuals who undermine democracy or obstruct corruption investigations. It also sanctions those allegedly involved in the following offenses: corruption related to government contracts, bribery and extortion, and the facilitation or transfer of the proceeds of corruption, including through money laundering.

El Salvador's government has extended a controversial state of emergency by another month for a fourth time. Human rights groups say the measures, which allow police to arrest suspects without warrants, have led to arbitrary detentions. But the government argues they have made the country safer. The special measures were declared in March to combat rampant gang violence. Since then, 46,000 people have been arrested on suspicion of belonging to gangs in the country of 6.5m people.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released its 2021 Annual Report, a reference instrument to foster institutional transparency. The Report addresses the situation of human rights and presents relevant progress made in the Americas, along with pending challenges. Each one of the Report's six chapters mentions specific institutional achievements. The IACHR granted 73 new precautionary measures, extended a further 33, and requested five temporary measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Commission further issued four resolutions to follow up on precautionary measures, given persistent risk factors or the emergence of implementation challenges. A total of 40 precautionary measures were lifted, in the belief that the risk factors that justified their existence had disappeared. During 2021, all requests for precautionary measures received by 2019 that were pending a final decision were reviewed. 

For several months now, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has pursued a campaign of mass arrests. Under his recently extended state of emergency, police have arrested more than 43,000 people on suspicion of membership in the gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18, which the government classifies as terrorist groups. Grounds for arrest include having tattoos, living in neighborhoods with gang presence or simply “looking like criminals.” Amnesty International has reported on human rights abuses, including indefinite pretrial detention, trials in absentia and lifting sentencing restrictions on minors as young as 12. At least 59 people have died in custody, according to the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal.

Bukele’s “state of exception” – declared at the end of March and recently extended until late July – has outraged human rights activists who say massive human rights violations are being committed. “They have detained tens of thousands of people, many of them because of their physical appearance or because they have tattoos … We have found case after case in which the people [being arrested] have no links to gangs,” said Tamara Taraciuk, Human Rights Watch’s acting director in the Americas. “The reality is, this could happen to [anyone].” Exhausted with years of rampant gang violence, however, many Salvadorans see little extreme about Bukele’s crusade, which the president compares to chemotherapy and insists will continue until “the metastatic cancer” of crime is eradicated.