On April 20, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, broke his relative silence on the detention of more than 200 Venezuelans in his country’s super max CECOT prison. In a post directed to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Salvadoran president defended his mass detention project and proposed a “prisoner exchange”.
Despite the innumerable criticisms his government has received for holding Venezuelan citizens with no convictions or open legal proceedings in El Salvador, Bukele defended their detention repeating the allegation that the detained migrants are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
“Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we do not have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained in the framework of an operation against gangs such as the Tren de Aragua in the United States… However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that contemplates the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners that you keep.”
Bukele explicitly requested the release of several people, including Venezuelan opposition leaders who have been arrested and charged in relation to alleged coup attempts, as well as several foreign nationals detained in Venezuela.
The response of the Venezuelan Public Prosecutor’s Office
The Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office did not delay in responding to Bukele and affirmed that, through his message, the Salvadoran President admitted “that he is holding 252 Venezuelans illegally” and unilaterally “outside the law.” “The whole world must be disgusted by the fact that ‘CECOT’ is no longer a torture center created by the macabre mind of Bukele to punish criminals in his country, but a place of forced disappearance of innocent Venezuelan nationals (as agreed with his imperial partners) whom Bukele uses as an expert in human trafficking to receive in exchange millions of dollars,” reads the official statement.
The Venezuelan Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, also informed that he had requested information from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador about the alleged crimes of the Venezuelans that justify their detention, as well as if they have talked before a judge, if they have had access to a lawyer, and if they have been able to communicate with anyone since the moment of their detention. In addition, Saab explained that he has sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on how the treatment of Venezuelans in the United States and El Salvador is a serious violation of international law and a crime against humanity.
“Freedom for political prisoners in El Salvador!”
For its part, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc in El Salvador repudiated Bukele’s communiqué, affirming that the proposal for a “prisoner exchange” is nothing more than “a propaganda maneuver to hide the repressive and criminal policy of his government against the Salvadoran people.”
The Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc affirmed in its public statement that political prisoners do exist in El Salvador, despite Bukele’s claims: “In El Salvador, hundreds of social fighters, trade unionists, students, and human rights defenders are kept imprisoned under a regime of terror that criminalizes poverty and dissidence.” The group also reaffirmed their demand for the immediate release of all political detainees.
According to the communiqué, among the political prisoners are several historical leaders of the Salvadoran left, such as Eugenio Chicas; contemporary social and trade union leaders such as Fidel Zavala, Atilio Montalvo, Pepe Melara, and other trade unionists, as well as the five environmentalists arrested for their opposition to mining projects in the Central American country. Several journalists who have been silenced after denouncing human rights violations, are also being detained by Bukele’s regime, such as Luis Menjívar. Additionally, thousands of young people from poor neighborhoods have been detained en masse thanks to the “Territorial Control Plan”. Most of them have been detained without any evidence, under the pretext of “fighting gangs”.
In this sense, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc expressed: “Bukele has no morals to speak of justice when his government has militarized the streets, dissolved constitutional guarantees, and turned El Salvador into a laboratory of authoritarianism. His alliance with Yankee imperialism and his complicity with Trump’s fascist policies unmask him as a puppet of transnational capital and kidnapper of Venezuelan citizens.”
International condemnation
Bukele’s partnership with Trump in the detention of migrants has been met with sharp criticism by human rights organizations who have declared that the arbitrary detention of migrants in a third country violates several international agreements.
Human Rights Watch went so far as to state that “The governments of the United States and El Salvador have subjected more than 200 Venezuelans to enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention.”
“These enforced disappearances constitute a grave violation of international human rights law…The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has left these individuals outside the protection of the law and caused their families immense pain,” said Juanita Geobertus, director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.
The deportation and detention operation was possible thanks to an agreement between Bukele and Trump, through which the United States will pay an undisclosed sum of money for each detainee. The Trump administration has claimed that those deported are members of the criminal gang “Tren de Aragua”, seeking to justify their detention in the notorious prisons inaugurated by the Salvadoran government under Bukele’s iron-fisted administration.
Read more: CECOT: Bukele’s mega prison where “the only way out is in a coffin”
In this regard, Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, said several days ago: “No Latin American democrat can accept as a principle of a republic, that for the crimes of the gang called ‘Tren de Aragua’, all the Venezuelan people in exile are criminalized. It is repeating the steps of the fascists against whom the American soldiers fought to the death… We do not accept, and American justice does not accept, that the children of Venezuela, the motherland of Bolivar, be criminalized. [Mr. Bukele,] hand over to us the Colombians you have in your jails. Let the Venezuelan people go free because they know how to shout for freedom. Migrants are not criminals; this is a reason for humanity.”
