Bukele cracks down on peaceful protests outside his home: blames NGOs
Following in footsteps of Nicaragua and Venezuela, Bukele proposes "tax" on foreign aid organizations
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Riot police dispersed more than 300 families protesting peacefully near the home of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and arrested two social leaders on Monday May 12. The protesters were trying to draw attention to a recent judicial order that dispossessed them of their lands and left them homeless and without livelihoods.
Several environmental and human rights organizations on Tuesday denounced the “arbitrary” detention of environmental lawyer Alejandro Henríquez.
In response, Bukele announced a proposal for a “Foreign Agents Law” that will apply a 30% tax donations to NGOs.
In the announcement, made on his social media accounts, Bukele blamed NGOs for the protests and claimed that the new tax could find “a real solution” to the problem of the displaced families.
Human Rights Watch Americas director, Juan Pappier, criticised the proposal in public statements on the social media site X. “Like Ortega in Nicaragua, Maduro in Venezuela, and Putin in Russia, Bukele proposes a law of ‘foreign agents’ to attack civil society organizations and independent media in El Salvador.”
More than 5,600 NGOs have been shut down in Nicaragua since 2018 opposition protests. Venezuela has largely banned foreign NGOs from working in the country entirely through laws restricting their finances.
Bukele has ramped up persecution of civil society in recent weeks. On May 6 he arrested the heads of several transport companies that provide buses in the country after a government decree that all transportation would be free for one week caused logistical chaos in the country.
Bus routes, overwhelmed with passengers, ran slowly, skipped stops, or even in some cases, collapsed entirely. He accused the transport owners of “sabotaging the country.”
One of the owners has since died while in police custody.
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"The protesters were trying to draw attention to a recent judicial order that dispossessed them of their lands and left them homeless and without livelihoods."
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