US-Backed Torture in El Salvador: Shocked, Shocked!
CBS News reports that the treatment of Venezuelan migrants at El Salvador's infamous CECCOT prison amounted to “arbitrary detention” and “torture,” according to human rights groups. What the report downplays is that this brutal 'shock and awe' prison model, pioneered by Nayib Bukele, was openly praised and implicitly endorsed by US officials and media when it targeted alleged gang members. In
fact, the US recently provided over $116 million in aid to El Salvador in 2023 alone . It appears 'torture' isn't torture when it's politically convenient or when the victims don't fit the 'sympathetic' narrative. The same outlets that once championed Bukele's 'tough on crime' approach now furrow their brows over migrants caught in the same system the US helps fund. How many more authoritarian
strongmen will the US empower before realizing that exported brutality often boomerangs? One might wonder if the concern would be as robust if these migrants weren't Venezuelan, but perhaps, say, Palestinian.