Journalists and human rights leaders are fleeing El Salvador as Bukele jails dissidents

Mexico City – They fled to Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica and Spain. Most of them remained in a hurry of a few furnished, as they were not sure when – or when they were not going back.

While El Salvador is broken on the opposition, the herd of President Nayib Bukele’s critics, human rights activists, journalists, and other members of civil society, raises the country.

More than 100 people have fled in recent months – the biggest political exiles since the bloody civil war of the country. This puts El Salvador in the company of other authoritarian Latin American countries, including Nicaragua and Venezuelan, where the opposition was punished and critics elected between imprisonment and exile.

On Thursday, one of El Salvador’s most important human rights groups joined the flight. Founded in 2000 by the leaders of the Church of the Bishopric Church, Cristosal announced that he had suspended his operations in the country and left about two dozen employees.

Cristosal became a thorn next to Bukele, a charismatic populist, who adopted his tactics and encouraged President Trump with his close alliance with President Trump.

The group ran contrary to the Constitution for a second presidential period of Bukele last year. El Salvador criticized the ongoing suspension of civilian freedoms as part of Bukele’s comprehensive pressure in the gangs, and said that hundreds of people were imprisoned in the country’s bad prisons.

Cristosal’s leaders have been confronted with Bukle’s surveillance, police harassment and attacks on social media for years.

However, this year, the authorities issued a new law that would apply 30% tax on donations to non -governmental organizations such as Cristosal. And in May, the police arrested the group’s leader Ruth Eleonora López, the leader of the Anti -Corruption program, and claimed that he had stolen public funds for a period of working for the government years ago. International Rights Organizations, including International Amnesty International, say that the accusations are fake and politically motivated and that López has been rejected a fair trial.

Constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya encouraged Cristosal to close Cristosal from the country, including environmental activist Alejandro Henríquez and Pastor José ángel Pérez, and the prison of the critics critics to close their offices and remove their employees from the country.

The police were the old of Enque Anque Anaya of the court in San Salvador after the hearing in June. The constitutional lawyer was arrested and the money was accused of laundering money.

(Salvador Melendez / Associated Press)

“If the government decides to persecute us and our staff, and when there is no neutral institution where we can defend our case,” Bullock said. “If we’re all in prison, we can’t help anyone.”

Buklele’s Nuevas Ideas Party controls the congress and cleaned the judiciary by replacing the independent judges with loyalists.

Bullock said that the intensity of power was the only column of democracy ”of independent journalism and civilian groups. He said that the latest arrests sent a clear message: “Democracy is over.”

“El Salvador is on a dark road,” he said, a lawyer of the Unidad Defensa Defensa Defensa, a lawyer chaired by DEKHOS Y Comunitarios, who was another non -profit. He has been living in Spain with his son, where his group’s office has been raided since February and was arrested by one of his colleagues.

Cruz represented that Bukle was sweeping in a mass imprisonment campaign, where more than 85,000 people or about 2% of the population of El Salvador were locked. “Bouquet blamed us for defending people’s rights,” he said.

Authorized, in a new country, indefinitely exile is not easy, he said. “I just came with a small suitcase,” he said. “It’s hard to know that you can’t go home and you have no choice but to start a new life.”

Bouquet also carried out a campaign against journalists.

One analysis Access of the Group of Laboratory and Digital Rights of the University of Toronto Citizens has now found that more than two dozen journalists have been continuing for more than a year, and Israeli developer with the spy software sold to governments with Pegasus.

According to the organization representing them in El Salvador, at least 40 journalists fled from the country. Among them, the boule government’s negotiations with the gangs, corruption in giving public contracts during the COVİD-19 PANDEM, and reporters documenting that the bouquet and his family had purchased more than $ 34 of more than 9 million dollars during the first presidency.

After warning that government resources are about to be arrested, the investigation news site El Faro, who revealed the gang negotiations for the first time, warned the reporters out of the country after warning that government resources were about to be arrested.

“We know what will happen: exile or prison, Oscar Editor -in -Chief Oscar Martínez said in an interview published by the committee to protect journalists earlier this year. “We will continue to report as long as we have time.”