On Monday December 9 the National Assembly, controlled by Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party, voted to extend the country’s State of Exception, which has suspended basic civil rights since March 2022, for the 33rd time. Within this context, Salvadoran social movements and civil society organizations commemorated International Human Rights Day (December 10) with multiple days of action highlighting emblematic cases and situations that altogether exemplify the Bukele government’s widespread and systematic attack on human rights in El Salvador.

Political Persecution and the State of Exception

The week began with a multi-day pilgrimage, carried out by organizations representing innocent and politically imprisoned victims of the Bukele regime, calling for a “Christmas with no Political Prisoners.” As shared on an October 12 CISPES webinar on the topic of political persecution and imprisonment in El Salvador the Committee of Families of Political Prisoners and the Politically Persecuted (COFAPPES) recognizes 22 political prisoners and over a hundred more who are actively facing political persecution.

The organizations who led the pilgrimage include COFAPPES, the Movement of Victims of the Bajo Lempa, Movement of Victims of the Regime (MOVIR), and Socorro Jurídico Humanitario and they were joined by communities from across the country where young people have been arbitrarily arrested en masse. The pilgrimage was met by riot police as the marchers approached the Presidential Palace, but a delegation of representatives was able to present their demands. The organizations called for the restoration of rights granting prisoners access to their families and lawyers, as well as freedom for the thousands of people still incarcerated despite having letters of court ordered release on substitutive measures which the prison system has not complied with.

Closing the week, on Thursday, October 12, the Community and Human Rights Defense Unit, UNIDEHC, hosted a panel to present their new “Report on Violation of the Right to Health in El Salvador’s Prisons Under the State of Exception” based on first-person witness testimony from several victims of arbitrary detentions under the State of Exception including that of Dr. Henriquez, a physician who was held as a political prisoner at the onset of the measure. Henriquez described how conditions, which prior to the State of Exception were already inhumane, worsened under the measure, including the denial of treatment to prisoners with chronic health conditions by order of the Director of Prisons.

Mining and the Santa Marta 5

As the mutli-day pilgrimage came to a close and delivered their demands, environmental organizations gathered at the gates of the Legislative Assembly, calling on the government to respect a 2017 law, passed unanimously, that made El Salvador the first and only country in the world to ban all metallic mining. Taking to X on November 28, Bukele called the law “absurd” while claiming that “God has placed a giant treasure beneath our feet.” Broad sectors of Salvadoran civil society, including environmental groups and the Catholic Church, have long opposed the environmental and human costs of mining, citing widespread deforestation and the contamination of 95% of El Salvador’s rivers.

Bukele’s comments came days after a court decision to retry five anti-mining activists from the Santa Marta community, despite a unanimous ruling in their favor on October 18. Their supporters have long connected their persecution with an attempt to overturn the mining ban. Outside the Legislative Assembly, Vidalina Morales, president of the Economic and Social Development Association of Santa Marta, addressed the crowd. “This is a law that has been thoroughly debated, which is why there was a national consensus amongst diverse sectors of the country [supporting it]. From churches, human rights organizations, and environmental organizations to women’s organizations and all other sectors.” The second Santa Marta trial begins January 3.

Repression of Activists, Community Journalists, and Union Members

The reopening of the Santa Marta case comes amidst a broader wave of targeted repression against opposition activists and journalists. Following three marches rejecting austerity measures in the 2025 budget proposal including mass layoffs and cuts in health services and education, hundreds of public workers have been fired. March organizers and union leaders have been targeted, and an entire bus of healthcare workers that was held at three different police checkpoints and prevented from reaching an October 19 march was fired in the ensuing days.

On November 28, National Civil Police files, leaked by the Ciber Inteligencia SV hacktivist group began circulating on social media, exposing systematic police surveillance of social movement leaders and people critical of the government’s policies and human rights abuses. The files include profiles of popular social movement leaders, human rights, feminist and environmental activists as well as lawyers who are known to express online criticism of the government. Several historic FMLN leaders are among “critics” profiled, including Rubén Zamora, who has faced multiple arrest attempts and Atilio Montalvo, a negotiator of the 1992 Peace Accords, who has been imprisoned on fabricated terrorism charges.

Days later, on December 4, the house of journalist Monica Rodriguez and social worker and journalist Steve Magaña Ruiz was raided by police. Both work with Balsamo RTV, a community news outlet that reports on environmental concerns, political persecution, human rights, and attacks on democracy in El Salvador. That same night, the house of Carlos Najarro, a graphic artist whose work highlights the corruption and human rights abuses of the Bukele government, was also raided by police. Equipment, hard drives, and materials were taken from all three, and police did not offer them a reason for the raid, claiming that the case was under a gag order.

El Mozote Massacre: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

In a December 10 press conference held by human rights organizations representing victims of the 1981 El Mozote Massacre, in which close to a thousand people were murdered by the Salvadoran army, lawyers denounced measures by the government to delay a verdict in the trial. “There appears to be a policy at the highest levels [of the government], which is not new, to protect the criminals of the Salvadoran civil war,” said David Morales of human rights organization Cristosal.

As part of a judicial purge, the Bukele government replaced the judge presiding over the case in 2021. The victims’ attorneys claim that, despite overwhelming evidence and testimony, the new judge, Mirtala Portillo, submitted a plan that repeats steps and could take over ten years to complete. According to Pro-Busqueda’s Heli Hernández, this violates a 2012 Inter American Commission on Human Rights ruling requiring justice and reparations for the victims. 148 of the original plaintiffs have died since the case first went to court.

These delays in the El Mozote case are part of a broader attack on historic memory, the Peace Accords, and an independent judiciary under the Bukele government. While justice for the victims of the El Mozote massacre has long been a central demand for human rights defenders in El Salvador, this year International Human Rights Day was marked by a much broader range of demands as the attacks that journalists, environmentalists, and union leaders have faced for years under this regime reached new levels in 2024.