Thousands Protest Ga. Military School (of Americas)

[NVMojo]

COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) -

Thousands of demonstrators paraded, chanted and raised white crosses Sunday outside the Army's Fort Benning as they continued a 17-year-long effort to close a military school they blame for human rights abuses in Latin America.

"This is about men with guns," said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest who spent five years as a missionary in Bolivia and founded the group SOA Watch in 1990 in the effort to close the school.

"People of these countries are hungry," said Bourgeois, a naval officer during the Vietnam War. "You can't eat guns. You can't eat bullets. They want food ... medicine. They need schools for their children."

The Army's School of the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced in 2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), under the Defense Department. The school trains Latin American soldiers, police and government officials.

more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2006/nov/19/111909908.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. How many were arrested?

[roody]

8. 16 went under or over the three fences.

They will probably serve 3 to 6 months in federal prison. Names here. www.soaw.org

[John Q. Citizen]

2. I saw the Rev. Roy Bourgeois a few years ago when he came to speak to

our poli sci class at the U of M. (Montana)

He was an amazing speaker. He detailed his experiences working with the poor in Bolivia and his work to close down our official US terrorist training camp at Fort Benning, GA. which has graduated thousands of members of oppresive regimes in Latin America.

[Joanne98]

3. They should have worn V costumes.

[struggle4progress]

4. K&R

[Judi Lynn]

5. Minnesotans part of record SOA protest

Thursday 23rd November 2006 04:12 AM
Minnesotans part of record SOA protest
By Mary Turck

21 November 2006 COLUMBUS, Ga. - Hundreds of Minnesotans traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia, this past weekend in the 17th annual protests against the School of the Americas (SOA).

The School of the Americas is a military school that has trained more than 61,000 Latin American officers in combat techniques, command tactics, military intelligence, and techniques of torture. SOA is an official program of the U.S. government, funded by the government and run by the U.S. Armed Forces since 1946. (SOA’s name was officially changed to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC, in 2001.)

SOA graduates have been implicated in terrorism, human rights violations, coercion, and atrocities committed against civilian populations across Latin America. SOA graduates brutally murdered six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989 and took part in the massacre of 900 people in El Mozote, El Salvador. SOA alum Byron Lima Estrada was convicted of murdering Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. Another SOA graduate commanded the unit that carried out the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico. During the 1980s, SOA manuals recommended blackmail, torture and execution of political dissidents.

The Minnesotans at Fort Benning, like the rest of the 20,000-plus protesters, came from a wide spectrum of the population. Young people included a school-sponsored delegation from Cretin Derham Hall in St. Paul as well as many other high school and college students. Minnesota Vets for Peace brought a busload of people, and others drove or flew to Georgia.
(snip/...)

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_2777

[NVMojo]

7. ...and what are our Dem leaders doing about this travesty of a school?

[roody]

9. Now is the time to pressure your representatives.

Here is a history of legislation to close the School of Assassins. http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=96

[Judi Lynn]

10. That's a good link. It doesn't seem to be commonly known that

this effort continues throughout the year, all over the country, and throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Surely the torture providers know this is NOT the way to treat their fellow human beings, and that there is literally no excuse. A man/woman can NEVER be that stupid.

Only the people willing to start asking around, doing research will realize how much torturing has been going on for a LONG time in our names, using people from this country in this Western Hemisphere to terrorize horrendous numbers of people.

It's almost enough to make a person lose faith in people altogether, but as you see, the numbers of people who struggle against underhanded, hate-driven abuse of others have ALWAYS included large numbers of male and female religious workers. They are always also are among the ones who get slaughtered by right-wing militaries/paramilitaries in Latin America and the Caribbean. On edit: Evidently, knowing as much as they do, having lost their fellow nuns/priests still has not caused them to give up to despair, even now. I'd like to find the faith they have crafted to keep themselves going. I just don't find much in humanity to stand up FOR, yet, other than it's dead wrong to allow these people to control everything, and everyone, through the arrogant, filthy use of violence. It's wrong to let them continue unchecked in silence if you can possibly even whisper your disapproval, your resistance.

[roody]

11. Father Roy Bourgeois' autobiography is a good,

hope giving read. It's called "Disturbing the Peace."

[saigon68]

6. They train thugs who become Nun rapists