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El Salvador’s top human rights organisation, Cristosal, announced on Thursday it is leaving the country because of mounting harassment and legal threats by the government of President Nayib Bukele.
The organisation has been one of the most visible critics of Bukele, documenting abuses in the strongman’s war on the country’s gangs and the detention of hundreds of Venezuelan deportees in an agreement with the US president Donald Trump.
Bukele’s government has long targeted opponents, but Cristosal executive director, Noah Bullock, said things reached a tipping point in recent months as Bukele has grown empowered by his alliance with Trump.
“The clear targeting of our organisation has made us choose between exile or prison”, Bullock said. “The Bukele administration has unleashed a wave of repression over the past few months … There’s been an exodus of civil society leaders, professionals and even businessmen.”
El Salvador’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cristosal has been working in El Salvador since 2000, when it was founded by Evangelical bishops in order to address human rights and democratic concerns after the country’s brutal civil war.
On Thursday, the human rights organisation announced that it packed up its offices and moved 20 employees to neighbouring Guatemala and Honduras. Cristosal quietly got staff and their families out before publicly announcing they were leaving out of fear they could be targeted by the Bukele government.
The decision came after its top anti-corruption lawyer Ruth López was jailed in May on enrichment charges, which the organisation denies.
Cristosal’s legal team has supported hundreds of cases alleging the government arbitrarily detained innocent people in its crackdown on gangs, and has unlawfully detained Venezuelans deported from the US. López headed many of those investigations. In a court appearance in June, she appeared shackled and was escorted by police.
“They’re not going to silence me, I want a public trial,” she said. “I’m a political prisoner.”
For years, the organisation said staff have been followed around by police officers, had their phones tapped by spyware like Pegasus, and been subject to legal attacks and defamation campaigns.
But López’s court appearance was the moment that Bullock said he knew they would have to leave the country.
At the same time, the government has arrested more critics, while others have quietly fled the country. In late May, El Salvador’s congress passed a “foreign agents” law, championed by the populist president. It resembles legislation implemented by governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus and China to silence and criminalise dissent by exerting pressure on organisations that rely on overseas funding.
Bullock said the law would make it easier for the government to criminalise staff and cripple the organisation economically.
Cristosal’s flight from the country marks another blow to checks and balances in a country where Bukele has consolidated control of the government. Bullock said no longer being able to work in the country will make it significantly harder for the organisation to continue its ongoing legal work, particularly supporting those detained with little access to due process.
