El Salvador President Nayib Bukele defies critics: ‘I don't care if they call me a dictator'
Nayib Bukele celebrated his re-elected as president of El Salvador.
Human rights defenders criticised his rule.
But he rejected criticism, arguing he is achieving results.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said he would rather be branded a 'dictator' than allow criminals to run loose, defying critics in a barnstorming speech marking one year since his re-election.
His hardline approach to El Salvador's powerful gangs has made him one of the world's most domestically popular leaders, even as human rights defenders raise alarm over arbitrary arrests and eroding civil liberties.
'I don't care if they call me a dictator. I'd rather be called a dictator than see Salvadorans killed in the streets,' he said during his speech at the National Theatre.
First elected in 2019, Bukele was returned to office in a landslide vote last year after the Constitutional Court knocked down a prohibition on consecutive terms.
His second stint in office has been characterised by an alliance with US President Donald Trump on deportations as well as what critics describe as a widening offensive against human rights defenders.
But Bukele accused NGOs of defending criminals and suggested the press was joining an 'organised attack' spearheaded by international groups.
Let them discuss semantics while we remain focused on achieving results.
Nayib Bukele
'Contrary to the lies they spread day and night, we have more results than any other government in all our history.'
Bukele's war on gangs is widely credited with slashing homicides to the lowest rate in three decades.
But rights groups say he has increasingly abused the state of emergency and crackdown on crime as a pretext to silence dissidents.
In May, a coalition of rights groups, including Amnesty International, condemned rising repression under Bukele after the arrest of prominent lawyer Ruth Eleonora Lopez.
Lopez was arrested on 18 May and accused of embezzling state funds when she worked for an electoral court a decade ago.
Marvin Recinos/AFP
A vocal critic of Bukele's anti-crime policy, she worked for a rights group that was investigating alleged state corruption and assisting Venezuelans deported by the US and imprisoned in El Salvador.
Washington is paying Bukele's government to imprison 288 migrants accused by the Trump administration of belonging to gangs.
Two activists were also arrested in May, while in February, the leader of the Human and Community Rights Defence Unit Fidel Zavala was detained and accused of links with gangs.
Last month, Bukele's allies in the Legislative Assembly imposed a Foreign Agents Law levying a 30% tax on organisations receiving overseas funding and requiring them to join a special registry.
Bukele's human rights commissioner Andres Guzman, who has defended the leader against allegations of abuses, told AFP at the end of May that he has resigned.
'In this first year of the second unconstitutional term, there is an authoritarian escalation. It is the consolidation of dictatorship,' Ingrid Escobar, director of the NGO Humanitarian Legal Aid, told AFP.
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