Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he can fix the serious crisis of violence that Haiti suffers if it has the approval of the local authorities and the UN, and insisted that it is possible to swear the Haitian gangs, a victory it already achieved in El Salvador.
Can we fix it. But we will need a UN Security Council resolution, the consent of the host country and that all mission expenses are covered, Bukele posted in English on his X-ed account, around midnight on Saturday, in reaction to a user’s message.
It’s an hour later, the Salvadoran president, known for his “war on the gangs,” with which he managed to make his country go from being one of the most dangerous in the world to the safest in Latin America, in his words, returned to the same social network to deepen Haiti’s problem.
Bukele reacted to a video in which the member of a gang in Haiti was allegedly seen eating human remains, in undated images that could be several months old, while it is explicitly shown how he removes from a street bonfire a victim’s scorched leg and rips pieces of meat from a street bonfire.
Did we see similar images in El Salvador a few years ago. Gangs bathing with the skulls of their victims, Bukele explained.
Faced with this situation, he added, “all the experts” said that they could not be defeated (the gangs), because they were an intrinsic part of Salvadoran society.
You were wrong. We wiped them out. The same must be done in Haiti, the Salvadoran president ruled.
El Salvador’s Proposals on Haiti
This is not El Salvador’s first proposal on Haiti. By January 2023, the Central American country had already pledged to open a cooperation office in the island nation to reduce high crime rates, according to the Vice Presidency.
Months later, in March, the vice president, Felix Ulloa, said at the 28th Ibero-American Summit that his country was ready to send an assistance mission to Haiti following an exchange of letters between Bukele and Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
It is time to take action, there have been many speeches, many agreements, many resolutions on the Haitian case, but we have to go on the ground and El Salvador is ready to send a mission immediately the diplomatic agreements are finalized, the Salvadoran vice president added.
Bukele and his officials say El Salvador has become the safest country in the Western Hemisphere thanks to the implementation of an emergency regime focused on the “war on gangs,” which suspends constitutional rights and has left more than 78,100 arrests.
The security policy of mass arrests has been criticized by local and international human rights agencies, which have received complaints of abuses, including arbitrary detentions, torture and unclarified prison deaths.
Violence in Port-au-Prince has increased significantly since 28 February became known that Henry had pledged to hold elections in Haiti before the end of August 2025, a very distant date given that the Prime Minister had to complete his term on 7 February, according to an agreement of 2022. EFE
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in El Mundo