El Salvador urged to release political activists arrested on “baseless charges” – JURIST
International rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday criticized the “baseless charges” brought against two human rights defenders arrested by El Salvador police in May 2025 and called for their immediate release. José Ángel Pérez, 55, and 29-year-old Alejandro Antonio Henríquez were arrested while peacefully protesting the mass eviction of dozens of families from the El Bosque community near San Salvador. HRW claimed to have reviewed court documents and videos related to the arrest, asserting that these indicate that the arrests were arbitrary and the charges unfounded.
“The evidence we reviewed shows that these community leaders were detained simply for exercising their right to peaceful assembly,” stated Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at HRW. “When authorities treat peaceful protest as a crime, the message to all Salvadorans is unmistakably that they should stay silent or risk prison.”
Pérez and Henríquez were arrested on May 12, after members of the El Bosque community, an agricultural cooperative for small-scale coffee growers in the Santa Tecla district of the nation’s capital, gathered near President Nayib Bukele’s residential neighborhood to protest an eviction order issued by Bukele to displace an estimated 300 families from their homes. Following the protests, the issuing court revoked the eviction order.
Both Pérez and Henríquez have been charged with “aggresive resistance,” which is defined under Salvadoran law as using “means of violence, intimidation or threats to interfere with police or judicial actions,” as well as secondary charges of inciting “public disorder,” a crime characterized by “obstructing public roads or access to them … impeding free movement, and invaditing installations or buildings.” Convictions of either of these crimes carry sentences ranging from two to six years’ imprisonment.
One video reviewed by HRW shows Pérez and Henríquez calmly speaking with police officers at the demonstration, when one officer grabs Henríquez by his backpack and pulls him away, while other anti-riot officers close in on demonstrators. Pérez was then shown to have been seized by police and escorted to a police vehicle. While prosecutors claim that the arrests were necessary to prevent “inevitable” and “aggressive actions” by demonstrators, including the 55-year-old pastor and 29-year-old lawyer and environmental activist, HRW asserts that the footage reviewed bears no such indications and instead serves as evidence to contradict the prosecution’s claims, given the obviously peaceful behavior of Pérez, Henríquez, and other demonstrators.
HRW claimed that the failure of prosecutors to present evidence capable of substantiating the crimes charged is indicative of the government officials’ intent to punish Pérez and Henríquez for their role in organizing and leading the demonstration on May 12. The activists, who have been in pre-trial detention since May, have also been declared ‘prisoners of conscience’ by Amnesty International, which has reported an alarming increase in the harassment, persecution, and criminalization of human rights defenders, journalists, activists, critical voices, and civil society organizations since the start of President Bukele’s second term.
“These detentions are not isolated events,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard. “They are part of a systematic pattern of criminalization that seeks to silence those who denounce abuses, demand justice, and demand transparency in public administration.”
As Amnesty International and HRW intensify pressure on authorities, the case of Pérez and Henríquez has become a litmus test for how far the Bukele government is willing to go in silencing criticism, with El Salvador risking a deepening reputation for criminalizing dissent and undermining the basic freedoms of its citizens, should the activists go unreleased.
