Sign an electronic letter to President Obama, telling him to close the School of the Americas. Write your representatives and ask them to support legislation to abolish torture tactics taught by the U.S. military.
After covering human rights stories in Colombia for seven years, I finally made the pilgrimage to Fort Benning, Georgia last November to join some of the 15,000 protestors who converge from all parts of the country to demand an end to the School of the Americas, SOA. Although it was renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," in 2001 it is the same combat training school that has instructed more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in torture, counter-insurgency and psychological warfare. Hundreds of thousands of Latin American teachers, student leaders, organizers, union workers, religious workers and peasant groups have been tortured, raped, massacred and disappeared by SOA graduates.
Coined "The School of Assassins," by rights defenders, it’s origins date back to 1948, to a U.S. military base in Panama and was moved to American soil in 1984. That's when Mary Knoll Father Roy Bourgeois discovered that Salvadoran troops, responsible for multiple massacres in El Salvador, were being trained at this base in Georgia, his mission to advocate the closure of SOA has grown into a national movement spearheaded by the SOA Watch, a non-governmental organization Father Roy formed with other activists to monitor correlations between human abuses in Latina America and the perpetrators trained at the SOA.
Colombia is the largest recipient of training at the School of Americas, which could reflect why the Colombian armed forces have the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. The film We Women Warriors documents several emblematic human rights violations, told from the perspectives of indigenous women, struggling to defend their land lives, culture amid the 60-year armed conflict. My film documents the 2006 massacre of five Awá people committed by the Colombian army, as well as the systematic killing of some 300 Kankuamos perpetrated mostly by the army and paramilitaries.
Sign a letter to Presdient Obama urging him to shut down the School of the Americas
President Obama has the power to issue an executive order to close the School of the Amercas. SOA Watch has set up and automated letter to the President, urging him to do so.
Urge your representative to support legislation to suspend the School of the Americas and investigate its instruction of torture tactics.
The Latin America Military Training Review Act, HR 2567, would suspend operations at the SOA/ WHINSEC, investigate torture manuals and human rights abuses associated with the school, and conduct an assessment of military training in Latin America. SOA Watch has set up an automatic e-mail letter to your House Representative, asking them to cosponsor this the HR 2567 act.
