by Eugene Walker

President Nayib Bukele, whose iron-fisted rule since 2019 has swept tens of thousands into actual dungeons, where cruel, inhuman, animal-like treatment is precisely the point, is now being granted even more power. It is true that some of the imprisoned are gang members, but importantly, thousands of innocent young people, civil society activists, human rights workers, are also imprisoned—not as collateral damage, but as those singled out for repression. If that wasn’t horrible enough, now the National Assembly passed a change in the Constitution allowing unlimited re-election to the presidency. Bukele will surely take advantage of this extension to his authoritarian rule.

He has already extended his “emergency decree” some 40 times since its first implementation, abolishing civil liberties, right to trials, etc. Dissidents are being suppressed. Civil rights advocates and journalists are fleeing the country.

Cristosal, an important human rights organization that has been investigating prison conditions, decided to close its offices in El Salvador after being threatened and harassed by police. “In the total absence of any institutions where we could defend ourselves—without minimal rule of law and due process—we felt we couldn’t continue to expose the organization and its staff,” announced Cristosal’s director Noah Bullock.

ILLEGAL MASS DEPORTATIONS

Inside the inhuman, torture-chamber prison known as CECOT. Photo: Heute.at, CC BY 4.0

Meanwhile, ProPublica, along with other investigating organizations, issued a report on the illegal mass deportations to El Salvador from the U.S. without any due process. Of the 238 Venezuelans shipped by the Trump Administration to the infamous, inhuman torture-chamber prison known as CECOT, they found that at least 197 had no criminal cases, and over half still had immigration decisions to be made.

When ProPublica interviewed several of the Venezuelans who had subsequently been released to Venezuela in exchange for U.S. prisoners held in Venezuela, the degrading, inhuman conditions of CECOT were exposed:

“Salvadoran police boarded the planes (that carried the deportees from the U.S.) and began forcing the shackled men off—shoving them, throwing them to the ground, hitting them with their batons….Once inside, guards stripped them down to white boxers and sandals. Those who tried to refuse to have their heads shaved were beaten….The men said beatings by the guards were random, severe and constant. Guards lashed out at them with their fists and batons. They kicked them while wearing heavy work boots and shot them at close range with rubber pellets….

“Just as vicious, the men said, was the psychological abuse. They lost track of the days because they were never allowed outdoors….Over and over, the men said, the guards called them criminals and terrorists and sons of bitches who deserved to be locked up. They said the guards told them so often that they were nobodies and that no one, not even their families, cared about them that some started to believe it.

“The men said they waged at least two days-long hunger strikes, skipping the beans, rice and tortillas they were fed most days, to demand an end to the abuses and an explanation for why they were in prison. ‘They told us nothing about how the process was going, what was going to happen to us, when we were going to see a judge, when we were going to see an attorney.’”

The Trump Administration bears equal if not more responsibility for the inhuman treatment the Venezuelans endured in El Salvador’s prison. Nor can we forget about the tens of thousands of Salvadorans who continue to be locked up and tortured in CECOT.