Prominent human rights group flees El Salvador

President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, April 14, 2025. (Eric Lee/The New York Times)

By Annie Correal

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 police, according to the group’s director, Noah Bullock, who announced the move 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 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 spokesperson 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 she remains imprisoned. Soon after, another Salvadoran lawyer, Enrique Anaya, who had denounced her arrest and publicly called Bukele a dictator, was himself detained. (Bukele embraced that title in a June speech.)

At a news conference Thursday, Bullock called López’s arrest a “breaking point” but said that other Cristosal employees had also been monitored and visited by police at night in what he called a new “wave of repression.”

The escalation comes as Bukele enjoys a strengthened relationship with the United States after 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 Bukele, but the Trump administration has remained silent in response to recent arrests, even as European leaders have spoken out.

Bullock said Cristosal had been threatened and surveilled 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,” Bullock said. “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, a majority in mass arrests.

While international groups raised alarms over eroding civil liberties and abuses under Bukele, Cristosal has been known for putting names and faces to the numbers, working closely with victims and families to bring to light arbitrary arrests and prison deaths. The organization also zeroed in on corruption cases.

López 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.

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 such as these have been allowed to happen, Bullock said, because of the state of emergency. Though originally intended to target violent street gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18, the state of emergency, he said, “now is being used as a political weapon against political voices.”

This past 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 investigative outlet El Faro fled the country after learning of warrants for their arrests, they said.

At Thursday’s news conference, a lawyer for Cristosal, Abraham Ábrego, said the government was also targeting union leaders, environmental activists and “anyone who criticizes” Bukele.

The government also introduced a “foreign agents” law to tax foreign contributions to nongovernmental organizations at 30%. The European Union condemned the move, saying it restricted civil society groups’ access to funding, and Goebertus 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, although it has maintained active offices in Guatemala and Honduras. The approximately 20 employees from El Salvador, including 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,” Bullock said.