Jurists accuse Bukele’s government of ‘crimes against humanity’ in El Salvador

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele plans to build a city called Bitcoin City as he encourages his country to use the digital currency. Reuters via BBC A group of international jurists accused, this Tuesday (10), the government of the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, of committing “crimes against humanity”, such as torture and disappearances, in its war against gangs. The country is in a state of exception that allows arrests without a court order. In almost four years, the government arrested around 90,000 people. Of these, around 8,000 were released due to lack of evidence. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that, within the framework of the exceptional regime, crimes against humanity were committed,” said the director for Latin America of the NGO InterJust, Ignacio Jovtis, when presenting the report of five experts. The Gipes report was presented at a hearing during the session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Guatemala City. Gipes is the acronym for the International Group of Experts for the Investigation of Rights Violations within the Framework of the State of Exception in El Salvador, composed of international jurists. See the videos that are trending on g1 The crimes include imprisonment in violation of international law, even of children, “torture, murders, forced disappearances, sexual violence, persecution and other inhumane acts”, the group added in a statement. At the hearing, the Salvadoran vice-chancellor, Adriana Mira, rejected the accusations and stated that in her country “there are no forced disappearances or anything similar to that”. The report adds to the recent complaint by the renowned Salvadoran NGO Cristosal that Bukele holds 86 “political prisoners”. The NGO transferred its operations to Guatemala citing persecution by the government. The government has been promoting “stigmatization and criminalization campaigns against civil society and the press”, alleged Gipes, supported by the International Federation for Human Rights and the International Commission of Jurists. Data obtained from official and independent reports, and from victims, indicate 403 deaths in state custody, including four children, and 540 cases of forced disappearance under the state of exception. “These are not isolated cases, but a policy in which crimes are committed on a large scale and in a systematic manner,” added José Guevara, an expert in humanitarian law and member of the group that prepared the report, in a statement. Bukele’s war on gangs has reduced violence to historic lows in El Salvador and made the right-wing president one of the most popular in his country and Latin America. But his strategy, whose symbol is a mega-prison for gang members, is also criticized because it resulted in the concentration of all the powers of the State, which in 2025 allowed him to establish unlimited re-election.

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