School of The Americas Watch: Congressional Vote To Cut Funding For The Ex School of The Americas Expected Today
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 21, 2007
9:54 AM
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CONTACT: School of The Americas Watch
Joao Da Silva,
202-234-3440, media@soaw.org
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Congressional Vote To Cut Funding For The Ex School of The Americas Expected Today
Congress Will Decide Fate of Controversial Pentagon Training Facility for Latin American Soldiers
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WASHINGTON - JUNE 21 - The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today on an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that would cut funding to the notorious Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC). The amendment will be introduced by Representatives Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and John Lewis of Georgia.
“Today Congress is presented with an opportunity to create a precedent for the defense of human rights and send a message of hope not only to Latin America, but the world.” said Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and founder of the School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch), a human rights advocacy organization that has campaigned since 1990 for the closure of the SOA/WHINSEC.
Citing concerns about human rights, foreign military training, transparence and accountability, constituents from hundreds of Congressional districts traveled to Capitol Hill in February to participate in lobbying efforts to suspend operations at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a military training facility for Latin American security personnel located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Support for the Fort Benning based SOA/WHINSEC, continues to erode. In May, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias announced that his government would cease to send police to be trained at the School. The Central American nation is the fourth country after Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela to sever ties with the school, citing its history of human rights abuses.
The SOA/WHINSEC made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place.
Protests calling for the closure of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC have taken place in Ft. Benning, GA around the November 16 anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests and Julia Elba Ramos and her 15 year-old daughter Celina at the hands of SOA graduates in El Salvador since 1990.
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