Why freedom of the press is under threat in El Salvador – Media

In the middle of last week, the president of El Salvador’s parliament gave an angry speech. There are people in his home country who feel threatened, said Ernesto Castro, and some have even applied for asylum abroad out of fear. “You think we’re crawling up to you and asking you to stay?” Castro raged into his microphone. “You think we need you? But we don’t! Just get lost!”

El Salvador is a small nation in Central America, barely larger than Hesse, six million inhabitants, plus another two million Salvadorans who actually live abroad. But she didn’t mean Parliament President Castro. His angry speech was directed against a very specific professional group: journalists.

“Self-proclaimed intellectuals” he called them in his speech. He later followed up on Twitter: “Payasos” he wrote there, you clowns. Other members of his Nuevas Ideas party had also railed against journalists, most notably Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s head of state himself.

Bukele is 40 years old and has more online followers than El Salvador residents. He has ruled the country since 2019 and relations between him and the press have always been strained. Sometimes critical journalists were barred from press conferences, sometimes the President specifically criticized individual reporters directly via his profile pages on Facebook or Twitter. One could interpret this as a gruff exchange of blows between politicians and the media. In recent months, however, the patronage has continued to increase: Journalists are monitored and their cell phones spied onand when editors report critically about the government or its members, tax inspectors soon turn up at their door.

Because there is no opposition, journalism has to get involved

In the past few weeks, however, the situation has escalated completely. More or less factual criticism has turned into open insults. In early April, President Nayib Bukele publicly described journalist and author Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson as “garbage” in a tweet. Martínez is one of Central America’s best-known experts on the criminal gangs that have been terrorizing El Salvador for decades. These so-called maras have long been part of society because they fill gaps and take on roles that the state neglects, he says. Bukele described this as “absurd” in his tweet. Immediately below in the comments, party comrades and high-ranking members of the government followed up: Martínez, it said, was not a journalist but a terrorist.

Whence all the hate? “Politically, there is hardly any serious opposition in El Salvador today,” says Sergio Arauz. he works for ElFaro, an online medium that reports on El Salvador and Central America and has won many awards. “But Bukele always needs new opponents for his politics – and now he has chosen us for this. The President has declared journalists to be his enemies.”

This is all the more fatal as the hostilities and attacks take place in an extremely tense environment. At the end of March, more than 80 people were murdered in El Salvador in just one weekend. The government immediately blamed the Mara gangs. The criminals will be prosecuted with all severity, President Bukele declared, the parliament, which is dominated by his party, declared a state of emergency, and since then a number of civil rights have been suspended. For example, instead of 72 hours, suspects can now be detained for more than two weeks without the right to a lawyer.

Almost every day since the state of emergency was declared, Bukele has been posting pictures of suspected gang members who have been arrested. 14,000 criminals have already been arrested the President proudly wrote on Twitterand his fans cheered underneath.

Gang violence has long made El Salvador one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Shopkeepers had to pay protection money to the criminal gangs, girls were systematically raped, and minors were forcibly recruited. Bukele draws his popularity among the population primarily from his allegedly harsh actions against the Maras. In fact, violence has decreased in recent years, in a process that began well before his tenure. But the president says the falling homicide rate is a direct consequence of his security plan.

Spreading “excitement and panic” about the gangs is forbidden

Experts have serious doubts about this, and journalists have recently collected evidence that secret deals between the government and gangs have in fact reduced violence. The series of murders at the end of March is just further proof of this thesis: it is assumed that the maras wanted to impose new conditions, using the dead as leverage. For Bukele, this could have been a political meltdown, but now it seems as if the mass arrests and the openly displayed harshness have brought him more sympathy among the voters. Critics say the government could also use the fight against the gangs to take down another foe: the press.

As part of the state of emergency, parliament tightened the penal code at the beginning of April: 10 to 15 years in prison now threaten anyone who spreads news about gangs that could lead to “excitement and panic”. Officially, the aim is to prevent the gangs from intimidating the population. Unofficially, however, observers and reporters fear that the change in the law could primarily serve to silence uncomfortable reporters. “The law is deliberately formulated unclearly,” says Sergio Arauz from ElFaro. “What is this news that can lead to panic? And what exactly is excitement?” Any article quoting a Mara member could theoretically land reporters an indictment. That’s dangerous, says Arauz, after all, the government has long been controlling judges and courts. “Nobody can hope for an independent judiciary here in El Salvador.”

In any case, Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson, the reporter and gang expert who was attacked by the president himself, left the country after receiving threats. Sergio Arauz, on the other hand, wants to stay for now. He’s not afraid, he says, but he’s concerned and above all angry. “I’d like to be able to just do my job, but it’s getting harder and harder.”