New Research Findings Further Incriminate the Notorious SOA/WHINSEC

[sangh0]

New Research Findings Further Incriminate the Notorious SOA/WHINSEC

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=762

"Since 1990, Latin American human right and justice advocates have worked to make known the human rights violations committed by graduates of the US Army School of the Americas. These include the high profile killings of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, the 4 U.S. Churchwomen in El Salvador, the 6 Jesuit priests and their coworkers in El Salvador, the El Mozote Massacre in which 801 people were killed in one day, the assassination of Bishop Gerardi in Guatemala following the release of his truth commission report linking the Guatemalan Army with the vast majority of human rights abuses.

In response to the mounting campaign to bring the truth about foreign military training to Congress and to the public, and in connection with the revelation of the so-called “torture training manuals<1>” that were used at the SOA, in 1999 the US House of Representatives voted 230-to-197 to close the SOA. In response, the Department of Defense (DoD) mounted its own campaign and convinced Congress that the school, which it previously stated needed no reform, could be reformed by teaching human rights and democracy. On January 17, 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (known by the acronyms WHISC and WHINSEC) was opened in the same facility with virtually the same curriculum as the SOA.

Continuing in our efforts to close the SOA/WHINSEC, today we bring important new data. They provide more detail about the superficialities of reforms at the school, the implausibility of real reform in the future, and the continuing pattern of support for human rights abusers in Latin America. We bring these finding along with a Dear Colleague letter by Rep. McGovern, inviting Members of Congress to join him in co-sponsoring H.R. 1258, “The Latin America Military Training Review Act, which calls for the suspension of the SOA/WHINSEC and the investigation of training needs in Latin America...."

[salin]

1. I read within the last year

that a doctoral thesis had been written documenting events of human rights violations in various central and south american countries - and tracking those cited as conducting the abuse back to having attended the SOA - AND its reincarnation (the reorganization and renaming was supposedly the turning of a new leaf - and the incidence of those being trained later being tied to human rights violations (often under the guise of governmental authority) was supposed to have decreased or ceased.) I have long been waiting to see work based on the dissertation (as often folks spin off papers once the disseratation has been defended.) Could this be related to that body of work? The small teaser that I read about it was very compelling (or my read of its methodology, access to data, etc.)

[sangh0]

3. I haven't had a chance to read it myself

.

[DUreader]

2. kick

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. This was my ONE bone to pick with Wesley Clark was his defense

of this institution.

[sangh0]

5. Mine too

.