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School
of the Americas Watch, 2004
Diana Cabcabin, an APN member, recently traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia
and joined 10,000 other protesters at the Watch on U.S. Army's School of
the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation. This is her report of the event.
Report back by APN Member, Diana Cabcabin on
The SOA/WHINSEC Watch at Fort Benning, GA 2004
As a first time participant, I looked forward to this opportunity to share
in the struggle for peace in solidarity with 16,000 others to oppose -
torture tactics used around with world with US taxes. I participated in
the annual Procession to Remember the Victims and was moved by the sight of
the thousands of people pouring into the demonstration area - which was
unfortunately a caged in area by the police and the sheriff's department.
The thousands who were confined to this fenced area were: human rights
activists, veterans for peace activists, numerous religious communities,
divinity students, celebrities, college students, artists, performers,
young and older activists -- all fighting for peace and justice and an end
to torture throughout the world particularly in Latin America, Palestine,
and Iraq.
Despite this constraints to movement of the masses by authorities, I felt
empowered by the numbers and the sense of solidarity among these masses.
Organizers intended and succeeded once again in pulling off this massive
non-violent action reminiscent of the civil rights movement and the
non-violent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. Even with the thousands of people
present, it was overwhelmingly a calm, solemn, peaceful gathering of
communities from across the country because of the violence that has been
perpetrated by the most powerful country in the world. One could feel a
part of some collective consciousness drawing these thousands of very
different people from around the country together as we responded with
"Presente" to the names of victims of graduates of the School of the
Americas, also known as the School of the Assassins. See photos on:
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/
This U.S. Army training center, now known as the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation, annually draws about 10,000 peaceful
protesters who gather there to voice objection to the training of Latin
American military in anti-insurgency tactics. Numerous SOA graduates have
been linked directly by human rights groups to the torture and massacre of
their own people when they return home. Our U.S. tax dollars continue to
support this.
The weekend program was packed with speakers, affinity group meetings;
economic justice workshops, diversity and non-violence trainings, and a
range of communities from Buddhist Drummers to Musicians' Collectives,
Military Families Speak out and words of inspiration and hope from
celebrity activists to honorable theologians and prisoners of conscience.
Activities culminated on Sunday with a solemn funeral procession to the
gates of Fort Benning. Fifteen people were arrested in acts of nonviolent
civil disobedience, many negotiating a 10-foot-high barbed-wire fence to
enter the base. They took this action despite knowing they would likely
face three to six months in federal prison.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/
While tens of thousands demonstrated against the existence of the
SOA/WHINSEC, US Secretary of Defense, I learned that Rumsfeld sought to
find clients for the Army School's Training during his tour of duty in
Latin America. Apparently, he urged Latin American states to do more to
fight terrorism, on Wednesday raised the touchy issue of using the military
to combat terrorism and organized crime.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=575
I was impressed that celebrities such as actress Susan Sarandan helped draw
in the 16,000 participants to this year's School of the America's Watch
(SOAW) vigil, demonstration and celebrations at the gates of Fort Benning
in Columbus, Georgia on the weekend of November 21-22. SOAW is widely
referred to as the School of Assassins. In the year 2000, the school
closed for three months, only to reopen with a different name and remade
image. Activists say little has changed, and that teaching torture
techniques continues to be business as usual for the newly named Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=595 |
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=600
Actor Martin Sheen of the TV program, "the West Wing", gave a powerful
statement after introducing himself by saying, "I think you all know what
my job is but this is what I do to stay alive." Sheen led the Sunday
Funeral Procession with founder of SOAW, Father Roy Bourgeois.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=608
Bay Area residents were present throughout the ranks of the 16,000 through
groups such as SOAW West, SOAW Contra Costa, large contingents of Veterans
for Peace, the network of the Haiti Action Committee, as well as religion
and divinity students across the country. I had a chance to talk to
several former prisoners of conscience who had made the decision to cross
the line into Fort Benning and risked federal incarceration for three to
six months.
One Bay Area activist was also a speaker, Laura Slattery. Slattery was a
West Point graduate several years before becoming activist. For SOAW she
was a nonviolence trainer once arrested at Fort Benning in 2002. Gesturing
toward the fort and the new fence, she said, "I look out there, and I want
to say I'm not the enemy, and you're not the enemy. Apathy is the enemy;
hate is the enemy; indifference is the enemy."
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=591
Marilyn Langlois, who volunteers for the Haiti Action Committee, recently
returned from a two week trip in the Spring documenting human rights abuses
in Haiti. She set up a table to educate others about Haiti, the recent
overthrow of Jean Bertrand Aristide and the on-going attacks on the poor
who have supported Aristide over the years.
There was also Sister Megan, who had been a prisoner of conscience two
times in the last 15 years. She remembers when they started out with 300
people. The growth of participants in the SOA Watch event to demand
closure of the School is encouraging. The last time she had crossed the
line, she crossed paths with Martin Sheen. She said that as she was
sitting on the military bus headed for the prison, the actor was seated
next to her. Although Sheen tried to be a prisoner of conscience, he was
called out of the bus by the guards and she assumed that it was because he
would have attracted too much press attention if he had gone to prison.
Another prisoner of conscience said that for her first SOA Georgia weekend
in November 1999, she traveled by bus with Washington-area activists to
commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Jesuit massacre in El Salvador
(see sidebar). On Sunday morning, 12,000 people stood in silence as
Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois announced the beginning of a symbolic
funeral procession. She said, "A chill went through me. Then I walked
with more than 4,408 others to step over the line at the main gate and
enter the base. We overwhelmed the authorities. They could only herd us
onto old school buses and release us miles away at a public park."
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=567
Giant Puppetistas were created on site and finished the day before the
demonstration, combining art, music, drama, dance, and drums with
passionate expression for peace and justice. Artists, youth from inside
and outside of the Fort Benning community outside of the SOA/WHINSEC gates
worked together for days on this. "This puppet is going to be so big, so
colorful, that 10,000 people will see the image and be drawn to the message
that, in a true democracy, everyone has a voice," said Abi Miller of
Virginia, one of the self-proclaimed puppetistas in town for the annual
event.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=584
Probably hundreds of Maryknoll missioners are now involved in the movement
because they have worked or are serving in El Salvador, Guatemala and other
nations where militaries have carried out some of the worst massacres of
innocent peasants. The victims include Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and
Ita Ford, who, with their colleagues, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and Lay
Missioner Jean Donovan, were raped and killed by soldiers in El Salvador.
The torture of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib military prison must have
added impetus to closing SOA-WHINSEC. In 1996, soldiers in Paraguay gave
SOA Watch training manuals they used at the U.S. Army school. The manuals
promoted execution, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion. When
the Pentagon finally admitted that the manuals existed, it insisted they
were not part of the curriculum-just a bureaucratic oversight.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=570
It was particularly moving to see the diverse groups from different parts
of Veterans for Peace from around the country. On Sunday morning bus by
bus lined the street across from the SOAW gathering while a huge contingent
of Veterans for Peace -- marched together toward the middle of the line in
time for the Funeral Procession. I recognized a few other Bay Area
residents among the crowd, and many people who wore telling expressions on
their faces of why they are now committed to peace.
The chain-link fence was erected on Fort Benning Road after the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Columbus overstepped its rights by setting
up metal detectors and searching demonstrators. Previously, U.S.
Magistrate Mallon Faircloth had said that SOA Watch's continuing use of
that area turned it into a platform for public dissent.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=577
There were peculiar distractions by the local police, sheriff's department
and/or military:
- 16,000 were confined area fenced off from the residents and only a
half-mile long. This fence was supposed to "prevent violence", although
there has never been a violent incident in the last 15 years. One resident
of the surrounding housing thought it was unfair to the SOA Watch
participants, protesters and visitors.
- Those who crossed the line were arrested for trespassing. A loud speaker
from the base constantly announced that anyone who violated the law by
crossing the line would be arrested.
- There was an intimidating presence of county sheriffs, military and local
police all along the gated half-mile area.
- A sniper tower was added to the police "protection" on Sunday.
- Check points were also meant to "control the non-violent crowd". There
were only two exit points.
- Loud helicopters, hovering over the crowd on Sunday, were used to
distract the 16,000 strong non-violent silent vigil during the procession
to remember the dead.
- Last year, participants were subject to being searched at the entry
points but a case was filed and won, the month before this year's vigil.
EXCERPTS FROM OTHER SOURCES:
The U.S. Army training school is now known as the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation. Annually, about 10,000 peaceful
protesters gather there to voice objection to the training of Latin
American military in anti-insurgency tactics. For decades, numerous SOA
graduates have been linked directly by the United Nations and human rights
groups to the torture and massacre of their own people when they return
home. The training school is supported by U.S. tax dollars.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=590
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Rumsfeld Seeks Clients for the School of the Americas Training
-
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who
has urged Latin American states to do more to fight terrorism, on Wednesday
raised the touchy issue of using the military to combat terrorism and
organized crime.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=575
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Why the Pilgrimage is Important and Growing
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excerpt from The Nation magazine -
Indeed, throughout the decades, countless atrocities in Latin America have
left trails of blood leading to the SOA. In one of the most widely
publicized cases--the midnight massacre of six Jesuits, their housekeeper
and her daughter in San Salvador in 1989--a UN Truth Commission implicated
twenty-seven soldiers, nineteen of them graduates of the school. And in
Peru, Honduras, and throughout the hemisphere, human rights groups have
repeatedly linked SOA alumni to heinous crimes. As Linda Aguilare, a
student activist whose family members in Guatemala were tortured and killed
by the military, said simply: "It's a school of assassins."
-
With a rally Saturday and a solemn funeral procession Sunday, the two-day
event at the main gate of Fort Benning included speeches from torture
survivors, street theatre, musical performances, die-ins and vigils.
Fifteen activists were arrested for crossing the line--an act of nonviolent
civil disobedience likely to land them three-to-six months in prison.
During the 1990s, crossing the line entailed a symbolic walk onto the
official grounds of Fort Benning; but since 2001, the action has required
scaling chain-linked fences covered in tarps and laced with barbed wire.
(Since 1990, 170 activists have spent a collective eighty-five years in
prison for protesting the SOA.)
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=615
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Wheels of Justice Caravan
-
Carlos Mauricio said he was kidnapped in San Salvador in June 1983, by
heavily armed men in civilian clothing, whom he said were part of a
government-connected death squad. Over a period of 21/2 weeks, he said he
was repeatedly beaten and tortured by being suspended by his arms, which
were tied together. "It's a miracle I'm alive," Mauricio said. The
experience left him with a sense of obligation to warn people about
governmental inhumanity of all kinds, including the recent torture of Iraqi
prisoners by U.S. troops. "It's my responsibility," Mauricio said. While
at Loyola, Mauricio is participating in events to mark the anniversary of
their deaths. His companions in the caravan include members of Veterans
for Peace and the SOA (School of the Americas) Watch.
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=580
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History of Torture Training at the School of the Americas
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There are six manuals linked to a CIA program, were used at the U.S. Army's
School of the Americas and distributed across Latin America by Army Mobile
Training Teams in the 1980s. They advocated everything from executions of
guerrillas to extortion, coercion and false imprisonment.
-
A 1992 Pentagon investigation, whose findings were kept a secret of state
under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, said the six manuals "evolved
from lesson plans used in an intelligence course at [the School of the
Americas]. They were based, in part, on old material dating back to the
1960s from the Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance program, titled
'Project X.' This material had been retained in the files of the Army
intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Ariz."
http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=557
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