El Salvador

Human rights defenders in El Salvador face harassment, intimidation, threats, surveillance and arbitrary arrests and detention reportedly often based on fabricated evidence. The authorities of El Salvador are increasingly using the judicial system to criminalise the activities of human rights defenders.

The human rights defender community is regularly subjected to campaigns of defamation - they are labeled as 'traitors of the nation', 'terrorists' and 'subversive'. This tactic employed by the authorities is designed to discredit and undermine the work of human rights defenders by isolating and marginalising them, making them a vulnerable target for abuse.

Those who are particularly targeted are human rights defenders campaigning on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT). Several LGBT organisations have been broken into and ransacked, and their members attacked, intimidated, and threatened.