The chief prosecutor of Venezuela accused the president of El Salvador of being a “tyrannical” human beings trafficker after Nayib Bukele proposed to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants expelled towards the prisons of his country by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.
Bukele made the offer on Sunday evening in a message sent directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement which includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who have been expelled, in exchange for the release and the delivery of an identical number … Thousands of political prisoners that you held,” said the chief of El Salvador.
A few hours later, the proposal was postponed by one of Maduro’s best allies, the Attorney General Tarek William Saab. In a television address, SAAB said that the Salvadoran “cynical” offer exposed it as a narcissistic “neonazi” which had “kidnapped” more than 250 Venezuelan migrants sent to a maximum security prison in Salvador by the Trump administration since mid-March.
“Bukele is a human rights offender,” said Saab, stressing the three-year anti-gang repression of the politician, who saw at least 85,000 Salvadourians thrown into prison, largely without regular procedure. Human rights activists say more than 360 prisoners died.
Some members of the Venezuela opposition – in shock from his inability to dislodge Maduro, despite the beat apparently during the presidential election last July – welcomed Bukele’s offer. Leopoldo López, an exiled opposition chief who lives in Spain, said that the idea had his “full support”. The most important leader in the opposition, María Corina Machado, made no immediate comments.
However, many political activists and human rights have expressed perplexity and shock that Venezuelan migrants detained in Salvador – having been refused in the United States and deported to an authoritarian foreign country – had printed themselves in the political dispute between strong populists like Trump, Bukele and Maduro.
“The idea that there would be a business (prisoners) should be repugnant for anyone who really cares about human rights,” said Christopher Sabatini, main member of Latin America to Chatham House.
Geoff Ramsey, an expert from Venezuela du Adrienne Arsht America Center of the Atlantic Council, suspected the fate of the Venezuelans detained in El Salvador and Bukele the exchange of prisoners “Pr Stunt” had potential advantages for Bukele and Maduro.
“Maduro is very happy to quarrel with Bukele and to underline human rights violations in Salvador as a means of distracting the brutal repression and the violence of his own regime,” said Ramsey. According to the Human Rights Defense group Foro Penal, Maduro’s prisons are currently hosting around 900 political prisoners. Thousands of people were imprisoned after last year’s elections when Maduro, who has reigned since 2013, ordered repression to stop his apparent winner, Edmundo González, to take power.
From Bukele’s point of view, the offer was “an intelligent way to divert the conversation of the concerns related to the deportees who were held in Salvador to the existence of political prisoners in Venezuela,” said Ramsay.
For migrants caught in geopolitical prisoners, the consequences are calamites. Many have not been found guilty of any crime and it is not clear how long they will be detained.
In an interview last week, the wife of a Venezuelan prisoner, a singer called Arturo Suárez Trejo, deplored the way in which the Venezuelan detainees seemed to be part of a game of chess with high issues. “And these are the pawns,” said Nathali Sánchez, rejecting the statements that his child’s father was involved in the crime. “It’s bad,” she added.
The Trump administration targeting the Venezuelan migrants – which he has accused, largely without proof, of being gang and terrorists – put Venezuela opposition to a difficult location.
Apparently afraid of alienating the administration of Trump, its main leaders – in particular by including Machado – said little about the repression of migration or the expulsion of Venezuelan citizens in El Salvador. “(Opposition A) largely held the language on the questions of the treatment of other citizens because of its broader objective of obtaining the support of the White House in its favorite strategy (to defeat Maduro) and it is also reprehensible,” said Sabatini.
Among the friends and families of imprisoned migrants – many of them of the opposition supporters who fled Venezuela to escape the Maduro regime – the inability of the opposition to defend them provokes anger and frustration.
“The reality is that the Venezuelan opposition must have a good relationship with the White House, and they understand that they cannot be perceived as criticizing Trump,” said Ramsey. “But on the other hand, the general public of Venezuela is indignant by the situation faced with those who were expelled and sent to this maximum security prison in Salvador. He therefore really puts the opposition between a rock and a difficult place.”
