Salvadoran president criticizes erosion of security and freedom of expression in the West
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Tuesday before the United Nations General Assembly that the world “is becoming less free” and is heading towards “a new dark age” in a speech focused on the increase in insecurity and cuts in civil rights in all countries, excluding El Salvador, whose situation “has changed significantly in a very short time.”
“We are facing a new dark age of humanity. As Salvadorans, we recognize these symptoms of decline when we see them, because we have been through them all. We are living through the stages of our nation’s downfall. And we are seeing those same stages once again, but this time on a global scale. We cannot and do not wish to tell other countries what to do. Each country must make its own decisions and do what is best for its people,” Bukele said during his speech.
In this sense, he stated that a country as “small” as El Salvador cannot “change the course of the world” but can offer “advice” and become “a small refuge from the approaching storm.”
He also explained that, while the Central American country has become “safer,” the modern world has gone in the opposite direction and is becoming “increasingly pessimistic” because “the free world is no longer free.”
“New threats of war continue. When the free world became free it was thanks to its principles of freedom of speech, equality before the law, unity and respect for private property. But once a nation abandons its principles that make it free, it is only a matter of time before it loses its freedom altogether. The consequences are unfolding before our very eyes. We can see them in some cities of the so-called first world,” he added.
Similarly, he recounted how shops need to “secure their products”, even the cheap ones, as cities “no longer belong to the people” because “they have fallen into the hands of homelessness, gangs, organised crime and drugs.”
“You cannot claim the title of free world if not even your people are free to walk the streets without fear of being harassed, robbed or killed,” he added.
CRITICISM OF THE LOSS OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN THE WEST
He also criticised the “erosion of freedom of expression” in the West, which ten years ago “was the bastion of freedom of expression” while now “it is preached to by those who used to denounce”.
On this basis, he referred to social networks that have been forced to censor users at the request of their own governments, which have even made arrests “for sharing publications on social networks” and which have even “tried to ban their political opposition”, although he did not give any specific examples.
“In El Salvador we do not imprison our opposition, we do not censor opinions, we do not confiscate property of those who think differently, we do not arrest people for expressing their ideas. In El Salvador your freedom of expression, as well as your private property, will always be protected. In El Salvador we polarize the security of our honest citizens over the comfort of criminals. Some say that we have imprisoned thousands, but the reality is that we have freed millions. Now it is the good ones who live free, without fear, with their freedoms and Human Rights fully respected,” he added.
After that, he stressed that El Salvador, which “used to be one of the darkest places on the planet,” has been “reborn” because the Salvadoran people remembered that “freedom is taken,” thus managing to overcome “the greatest challenge” of the country, although he recalled that “there is still a long way to go and many things to achieve.”
“It may be too late to avert the dark times facing our world today, but it is not too late to build an ark and weather the storm. May God bless mankind,” he concluded.
