Prof. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin Interviewed by NPR About Human Rights Abuses at El Salvador Prison Where Venezuelan Migrants Were Sent

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Regents Professor and Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society, was quoted by NPR about the El Salvador prison where the U.S. sent 200 Venezuelan migrants suspected of being gang members and how the government of President Bukele of El Salvador is running an intentionally brutal justice system with little due process. Prof. Ní Aoláin, was one of the U.N. experts who has said that El Salvador was using the threat of terrorism to trample on the rights of its citizens. She said what Bukele is doing is nothing new in that he is invoking terrorism to subjugate a country which was done in Cold War Europe or in present-day China and Russia. The difference now is that the United States administration is not only endorsing the these tactics but is paying El Salvador to jail its deportees. She said, “We have a very dangerous situation in that we have a P5 member of the Security Council, the United States, acting like a rogue state,” adding that historically, people have tended to accept and applaud a period of, “ill-mannered leaders doing ill-mannered things.” She said this happened during the military dictatorships of the '70s and '80s in Latin America. “But ultimately, people understood that the violence and the cruelty and the harm of that was simply intolerable to a decent society.” She said what’s clear is that sooner or later, El Salvador and the United States will have their own moment of reckoning.