“We are under dictatorship.” After six years of reign, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador tightened his grip

Nayib Bukele, who calls himself “the coolest dictator in the world”, will serve as president of El Salvador for six years on Sunday, defined by controversial reforms, a period that critics say brought peace to the streets at incredibly high prices.

His ironhead crackdown on the country’s crimes was once the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere, resulting in the arrest and detention of about 87,000 people, usually with few proper procedures.

The government defended the move, pointing to a significant reduction in gang violence across the country, but opponents say it comes at the expense of mass incarceration and the erosion of civil liberties.

Over time, Dragnet has expanded, including civil society groups and journalists investigating journalists who collude with the country’s gang officials, critics said.

On May 19, Ruth López, an anti-corruption lawyer at the human rights group Cristosal, was also a prominent critic of Bukele, was detained by the El Salvador authorities for allegedly stolen “funds” from the treasury. However, despite being detained, Lopez has not been charged with the crime.

Shortly after Lopez’s arrest, the Buckler government passed a law that taxed foreign donations to Cristosal, accounting for 30%, which rights groups described as an existential threat.

“What we see is a lot of power in the hands of[Berkele],” Juan Pappier, deputy director of Latin America at Latin American Human Rights Watch, said of Bukele’s six years in power. Buckler’s rule was “based on the basis of demolishing democratic checks and balances and increasingly silence and intimidation of critics.”

The decline in gang-related crimes in El Salvador has made Berkeley so popular in Central American countries that he was re-elected in a landslide victory last year, even though the country’s constitution prohibits anyone from representing a second term. (Booker’s allies in Congress ended up replacing the top judges of the Supreme Court with judges willing to interpret the Constitution.)

The country has been in a “state of exception” since March 2022, allowing for the suspension of numerous constitutional rights. In the capital San Salvador, many say they now feel safely through communities that were once considered dangerous. Although they acknowledge that the country’s rights to imprisonment and moratoriums have increased significantly, Buckler’s supporters believe that the resulting peace and security deserve this trade-off.

Not everyone agrees.

Samuel Ramírez is the founder of the regime’s Victims (Movir) movement, a human rights organization that works with families of people believed to have been detained without due process.

Buckler had previously admitted that some innocent people were wrongly detained, but said thousands had been released.

Ramírez and other activists believe that many people are too afraid to speak out.

“Here we see soldiers armed on the teeth on the streets, police, and even armored trucks on the streets – tanks. This is synonymous with a country in the war.” “To me, the gangs have been neutralized. Now the war is against the people, so they have not proved, don’t say it out loud.”

The so-called backdoor transaction

Although he showed himself as a leader of law and orders, Bucker has long faced charges, negotiating the peaceful and security situation in El Salvador through a backdoor deal with the gang.

In 2021, the Biden administration accused the Berkeley regime of bribing MS-13 and Barrio 18, two of El Salvador’s most notorious gangs to ensure “make sure that incidents of gang violence and confirmed homicides remain low.” The so-called proceeds include cash, cell phones and captive Capos’ prostitutes.

Buckley immediately denied the allegations, calling them “obvious lies.”

But four years later, independent newsroom El Faro conducted an explosive interview with two self-proclaimed gang leaders at Barrio 18, claiming they intimidated voters in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to vote for Bukele in 2015’s San Salvador Mayor.

El Faro reported that the two male gang leaders also claimed that when he was president in 2019, Bukele arranged for El Salvador to get rid of wanton murder and blackmail so that they wouldn’t look bad.

Buckler has not yet publicly responded to their allegations publicly, but has skewed the report by El Faro in a May 10 post, ironically suggesting his only “agreed” with the gang leaders involved, involving putting them in jail.

A reporter from El Faro broke the story, fled the country before publication, and was expected to be arrested.

“I think Bucker will try to send us to jail. I have no doubt. After what he did to Ruth Lopez, Bucker decided to raise the bar and persecute El Salvador, who he considered to be the most obvious critic of El Salvador,” said the principal editor of El Faro, “

He said seven journalists in the publication faced warrants for reporting the alleged transaction. Even so, he said the newspaper would continue its journalism. The publication has been exiled in Costa Rica for the past two years.

“If El Salvador has any democratic appearance left, it’s independent journalism,” said Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal.

CNN has commented with the president.

“We are under dictatorship”

Last week, the Buckley administration passed a law that taxes NGOs at a 30% rate.

He proposed a similar law in 2021, but failed to pass. In any case, Brock said it was irrelevant whether it was proposed in El Salvador, passing or introducing any law: after six years of almost unrestricted power, Buckley was a law of himself.

Gracia Grande, a program officer at the El Salvador branch of the Dutch Democratic Institute, told CNN that the law is an existential threat to her NGO work.

She said the law would prevent them from continuing to work. It gave them three months to renew their registration as NGOs, but they didn’t know how the process would work.

Grande’s assessment of the situation was clear: “Now, we can openly say that we are dictatorial.”

Despite the growing anger among rights groups, Buckley’s punitive punishment system has won his fans.

U.S. President Donald Trump praised the crackdown and reached a deal with Bukele, who agreed to put hundreds of Venezuelan deportations along with the El Salvador Center for Terrorism and along with thousands of detained El Salvadors.

The large prison, known as Cecot, is considered the largest prison in the Americas and is notorious for Spartan conditions, a condition that rights groups denounce as inhumane.

“I think what’s going on here is a kind of laboratory that can achieve what can happen in other countries,” Grande, a worker of the NGO, warned. “Even the United States.”

During Trump’s meeting with Buckley at the White House in April, Berkle suggested that the U.S. president follow his leadership in mass detention.

“Sir President, you know there are 350 million people to be liberated,” Buckler said of the U.S. population. “But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. You know, that’s how it works, right?”

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