Bukele Defends Anti-Gang Crackdown Against Rights Critics in Meeting with Kast
NewsPresident Nayib Bukele didn't hold back when a journalist pressed him on human rights concerns during his meeting with Chile's president-elect José Antonio Kast. He flipped the script, asking why NGOs overlooked victims of gang violence for years.
Summary
In a widely viewed video clip, Bukele highlighted El Salvador's dramatic shift from 53 homicides per 100,000 in 2018 to a record-low 1.3 in 2025, crediting his state of emergency and mega-prisons like CECOT that provide medical care and cut gang operations. He accused NGOs of ignoring atrocities against innocents—like a girl who lost her arms to a gang bomb—while focusing on jailed suspects, noting prisoner death rates are even lower than in the general population. Critics from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report over 85,000 arbitrary arrests and 470 custody deaths since 2022, as Kast praised the model for Chile.