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Hello all - I would like to invite everyone down to Columbus Georgia for the annual School of the Americas vigil and protest in November. This is one of the most moving events that I take part in and if you have never been you owe it to yourself to attend. What is the School of the Americas?
The Fort Benning based School of the Americas, renamed in 2001 the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” has been pumping out assassins, dictators and death squad leaders for the dirty work in Latin America since 1946. This notorious training facility has left a trail of blood and pain in every country where its graduates have returned.
The SOA/ WHINSEC has trained over 64,000 L atin American soldiers in courses such as counterinsurgency, psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. Graduates of the school have been consistently linked to human rights violations and to the suppression of popular movements in the Americas. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared”, massacred, and forced into refuge by those trained at the School of Assassins.
The purpose of the School of the Americas is, and has always been, to control the economic and political systems of Latin America by aiding and influencing Latin American militaries. Countries with the worst human rights records have consistently sent the most soldiers to be trained at the SOA: Bolivia during the reign of terror; Nicaragua during the Somoza dictatorship; El Salvador during the bloodiest repression; and currently Colombia.
Gray Newman Board Member School of the Americas Watch North Carolina
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