School of The Americas Watch: Thousands Will Hold Public Fasts To Denounce Controversial Training Facility For Latin Americans
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 23, 2007
3:16 PM
|
CONTACT: School of The Americas Watch
Joao Da Silva
202-234-3440 / 202-302-4706
media@soaw.org
|
| |
|
Thousands Will Hold Public Fasts To Denounce Controversial Training Facility For Latin Americans
Nationwide Coordinated Actions in Support of Bill to Close the SOA/WHINSEC
|
| |
|
Washington, D.C.– On Wednesday April 25, School of the Americas Watch will launch a three day nationwide public fast in support of legislation that would suspend operations at the controversial U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC).
Public fasts and events will be held in over 75 towns and cities across the United States and seven Latin American countries. Human rights advocates will gather in front of Federal buildings, congressional offices, university campuses and major cross streets to raise awareness about the SOA/WHINSEC and demand that Congress close the controversial military training school.
The SOA/WHINSEC, a military training facility for Latin American soldiers located in Ft. Benning, Georgia , made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses in connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place.
On June 9, 2006, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) introduced an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that would have cut funding for the SOA/WHINSEC. While the amendment failed by a 15 vote margin, 35 Representatives who opposed the amendment lost their seats in the 2006 mid-term elections. Legislation to investigate the SOA/ WHINSEC and evaluate U.S. foreign military training in Latin America was reintroduced in the House of Representatives on March 27, 2007 as HR 1707, which already has broad bipartisan support in Congress.
Protests calling for the closure of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC have taken place around the November 16 anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests and two Salvadoran women at the hands of SOA graduates since 1990. On November 17-19 of 2006, 22,000 people gathered at the gates of Ft. Benning to call for the closure of the school, the largest demonstration yet in a 16-year history of opposition to the school. Simultaneous events took place in major cities of Latin America, Canada and Europe.
### |
|
Printer Friendly Version
E-Mail This Article
