El Salvador Punishes Rights Defenders Through Penal System
HAVANA TIMES – Amnesty International has denounced that El Salvador is using reforms to the penal system, along with the state of emergency continually extended by the government, to punish human rights defenders and silence critical voices.
Ana Piquer, Amnesty’s director for the Americas, said that “instead of imparting justice impartially, the penal system in El Salvador has become a weapon to punish dissent and stifle civic space.”
“Defending human rights or protesting peacefully today can cost you your freedom,” Piquer stated.
More than three years after it began, the state of emergency—already extended 42 consecutive times on a monthly basis—has consolidated a model that gives a façade of legality to mass detention without evidence, the suspension of judicial guarantees, and the imposition of disproportionate periods of administrative detention, Amnesty Int. reports.
At the same time, legal reforms in criminal and criminal procedure law introduced measures such as concealing judges’ identities, the automatic application of pretrial detention, and harsher penalties against children and adolescents.
These reforms have been flagged by regional and global human rights bodies—including United Nations mechanisms—for contravening international standards.
Amnesty Int. has documented how authorities have relied on vague and overly broad criminal categories such as “unlawful associations” or “terrorist organizations” to criminalize community leaders, trade unionists, and defenders of land and environmental rights.
Local organizations, for their part, have tallied more than 70 such cases in which individuals have been victims of arbitrary arrests, deprived of their liberty, and subjected to judicial proceedings without the guarantees inherent to the rule of law.
In the face of escalating persecution and criminalization of defenders, in July 2025, Amnesty Int. declared lawyers Ruth Lopez and Alejandro Henriquez, along with pastor Jose Ángel Perez, prisoners of conscience.
The organization considers they were imprisoned solely for their human rights defense work and their peaceful exercise of freedom of expression.
Amnesty Int. verified that the Attorney General’s Office and judicial authorities applied in these cases the timeframes and suspension of procedural guarantees established under the emergency decree, despite the charges against them being unrelated to gang activity, which the decree was intended to address.
“Ruth, Alejandro, and Jose Angel were subjected to extended administrative detention of up to 15 days, and the imposition of pretrial detention without sufficient grounds or effective judicial review,” an Amnesty Int. report stated.
Recently, the court handling the case against Henriquez and Perez—prosecuted for the crimes of resistance and public disorder—extended the investigation phase by an additional three months, even though no new elements for investigation had emerged.
The decision violates the right to be tried within a reasonable time and supports the claim that in El Salvador, pretrial detention is no longer an exceptional measure but a form of anticipated punishment, regardless of the crime with which a person is charged.
In Lppez’s case, arbitrary changes to the charges were also verified, along with the complete sealing of the proceedings.
Other defenders and dissenting voices criminalized and documented by local organizations have faced similar irregularities.
Meanwhile, prison conditions in El Salvador remain alarming: prolonged incommunicado detention, extreme overcrowding, lack of timely medical care, and risk of torture characterize the penitentiary system.
Amnesty Int. cited, in this regard, the cases of constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya and the spokesperson for the human rights organization Unidehc, Fidel Zavala.
On September 23, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures to Lopez and Anaya, warning that their prolonged isolation and indefinite detention place their lives, health, and integrity at serious risk.
Piquer stated that “prolonged incommunicado detention and inhuman conditions of imprisonment are part of a deliberate strategy to instill fear and break both those detained and the communities they represent.”
“The impact is devastating: self-censorship, reduced activity, and an ever more suffocated civic space,” Piquer added.
Amnesty Int. concluded by demanding that Salvadoran authorities comply with the precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Commission and that all individuals detained for defending their human rights be released.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.