MEXICO CITY — They’ve fled to Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica and Spain. Most left in a rush with few possessions, not sure of when — or whether or not — they’d have the ability to return residence.

As El Salvador cracks down on dissent, jailing critics of President Nayib Bukele, droves of human rights activists, journalists and different members of civil society are leaving the nation out of worry.

Greater than 100 folks have fled in latest months — the largest exodus of political exiles for the reason that nation’s bloody civil struggle. That places El Salvador within the firm of different authoritarian Latin American nations, together with Nicaragua and Venezuela, the place dissent has been criminalized and critics select between jail and exile.

On Thursday, one in every of El Salvador’s most distinguished human rights teams joined the flight. Cristosal, based in 2000 by leaders of the Episcopal Church, introduced that it had suspended its operations within the nation, and that almost two dozen of its staffers had left.

We are able to’t assist anyone if we’re all in jail

— Noah Bullock, director of the civil rights group Cristosal

Cristosal has been a thorn within the aspect of Bukele, a charismatic populist who has embraced strongman techniques — and who has been emboldened by his shut alliance with President Trump.

The group slammed Bukele’s unconstitutional run for a second presidential time period final 12 months. It has criticized El Salvador’s ongoing suspension of civil liberties as a part of Bukele’s sweeping crackdown on gangs, and offered authorized illustration to a whole lot of individuals it says have been wrongly imprisoned within the nation’s infamous jails.

Nayib Bukele, at proper together with his vp, Félix Ulloa, was reelected in February 2024

(Alex Peña / Aphotografia / Getty Pictures)

Cristosal’s leaders have for years confronted surveillance, police harassment and assaults by Bukele on social media.

However this 12 months, authorities handed a brand new regulation that might impose a 30% tax on donations to nongovernmental organizations like Cristosal. And in Might, police arrested Ruth Eleonora López, the chief of the group’s anti-corruption program, alleging she stole public funds throughout a stint working for the federal government years earlier. Worldwide rights organizations, together with Amnesty Worldwide, say the costs are spurious and politically motivated and that López is being denied the best to a good trial.

Her detention and the latest jailing of different outspoken Bukele critics, together with constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya, environmental activist Alejandro Henríquez and pastor José Ángel Pérez, prompted Cristosal to shutter its places of work and take away its staff from the nation, stated the group’s director, Noah Bullock.

Police escort Enrique Anaya out of courtroom in San Salvador after a June listening to. The constitutional lawyer was arrested and accused of cash laundering.

(Salvador Melendez / Related Press)

“There is no impartial institution where we can plead our case if and when the government decides to continue to persecute us and our staff,” Bullock stated. “We can’t help anybody if we’re all in prison.”

Bukele’s Nuevas Concepts occasion controls Congress and has purged the judiciary, changing impartial judges with loyalists.

Amid that focus of energy, impartial journalism and civic teams “were the only pillar of democracy that remained,” Bullock stated. He stated the latest arrests ship a transparent message: “Democracy is over.”

“El Salvador is on a dark path,” stated Ivania Cruz, an lawyer who heads one other nonprofit, the Unidad de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos y Comunitarios. She has been dwelling in Spain along with her son since February, when her group’s workplace was raided and one in every of her colleagues was arrested.

Cruz, too, had represented inmates swept up in Bukele’s mass imprisonment marketing campaign, below which greater than 85,000 folks, or practically 2% of El Salvador’s inhabitants, have been locked up. “Bukele has criminalized us for defending the rights of the people,” she stated.

Indefinite exile in a brand new nation has not been straightforward, she stated. “I came with only a small suitcase,” she stated. “It’s hard knowing you can’t go home and you have no choice but to start a new life.”

Bukele has additionally waged a marketing campaign in opposition to journalists.

An evaluation by the College of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and digital rights group Entry Now discovered that greater than two dozen journalists have been surveilled for greater than a 12 months with the spy ware Pegasus, whose Israeli developer sells solely to governments.

Not less than 40 journalists have fled the nation, based on the group that represents them in El Salvador. They embrace the reporters who documented the Bukele authorities’s negotiations with gangs, corruption within the awarding of public contracts through the COVID-19 pandemic and the truth that Bukele and his household bought 34 properties valued at greater than $9 million throughout his first presidential time period.

“We know what’s coming: exile or prison,” editor-in-chief Oscar Martínez stated in an interview printed by the Committee to Defend Journalists earlier this 12 months. “As long as we have time, we’ll keep reporting.”