The prominent Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal has closed its offices in El Salvador and its two dozen employees have departed for neighboring countries, amid threats and harassment by the police, according to the group’s director, Noah Bullock, who announced the move on Thursday.
Cristosal has compiled evidence of torture and other abuses committed under El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele — particularly under a state of emergency first imposed in 2022 to crack down on gangs — and it has investigated alleged corruption in Mr. Bukele’s government.
“Cristosal’s closure in El Salvador marks a dangerous turning point,” said Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch. “It sends a chilling message to survivors of abuse, civil society, and the press about the cost of standing up to power and denouncing corruption and human rights violations.”
A spokeswoman for the Salvadoran government did not respond to a request for comment.
In May, Ruth López, Cristosal’s anti-corruption director and a well-known lawyer, was arrested and remains imprisoned. Soon after, another Salvadoran lawyer, Enrique Anaya, who had denounced her arrest and publicly called Mr. Bukele a dictator was himself detained. (Mr. Bukele embraced that title in a June speech.)
Mr. Bullock, the group’s director, said that Cristosal employees had been monitored and visited by police at night in what he called a new “wave of repression.”
The escalation comes as Mr. Bukele enjoys a strengthened relationship with the United States following a deal to detain migrants deported by the Trump administration. During the Biden administration, U.S. officials called out human rights issues in El Salvador under Mr. Bukele, but the Trump administration has remained silent in response to recent arrests, even as European leaders have spoken out.
Mr. Bullock said Cristosal had been surveilled and threatened for years — including with Pegasus spyware installed on phones — but the organization’s leadership now felt it would not have any legal recourse if its employees were detained.
“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,” Mr. Bullock said, adding, “We also feel like we aren’t any good to anybody in prison.”
Under El Salvador’s state of emergency, which remains in effect, normal due process has been suspended and more than 80,000 people have been imprisoned, the majority in mass arrests.
While international groups raised alarms over eroding civil liberties and abuses under Mr. Bukele, Cristosal was known for putting names and faces to the numbers, working closely with families to bring to light arbitrary arrests and prison deaths. The organization also zeroed in on corruption cases.
Ms. López, the Cristosal lawyer, was at the forefront of investigations into potential acts of corruption by the Bukele government. One inquiry concerned the use of public funds to pay for the Pegasus software used to spy on journalists and rights groups; another looked into the misuse of pandemic funds.
Ms. López was accused of illicit enrichment after her arrest in late May. She denied the charges and called for a public trial — shouting “I am a political prisoner” — outside a hearing before being sent to prison in June, riveting the public to her case.
Arrests like these have been allowed to happen, Mr. Bullock said, because of the state of emergency. Though originally intended to target violent street gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, the state of emergency, he said, “now is being used as a political weapon against political voices.”
This spring saw an uptick in the number and type of people targeted by the Salvadoran government for arrest.
In addition to rights groups and lawyers, journalists from the investigative outlet El Faro fled the country after learning of warrants for their arrests, they said.
After members of an agricultural cooperative gathered outside Mr. Bukele’s home to protest an eviction, a leader and evangelical pastor were detained.
The government also introduced a “foreign agents” law to tax foreign contributions to nongovernmental organizations at 30 percent. The European Union condemned the move, saying it restricted civil society groups from accessing funding, and Ms. Goebertus, of Human Rights Watch, said the “sweeping” law was “designed to silence dissent.”
Cristosal was formed by Salvadoran episcopal ministers in Vermont a quarter century ago. For more than a decade, it has done the bulk of its work in El Salvador, though it has maintained active offices in Guatemala and Honduras. The approximately 20 employees from El Salvador, including Mr. Bullock, now plan to work from those offices.
“I think we became a primary target of the repression because in attacking Cristosal, and persecuting Cristosal, you send a message to everybody,” Mr. Bullock said.
Annie Correal reports from the U.S. and Latin America for The Times.
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