wfn.org | Charges Dismissed Against `School of the Assassins' Protesters

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

21-July-1999 
99242 
 
    Judge Dismisses Charges Against 
    `School of the Assassins' Protesters 
 
    Three Presbyterians Among Those Cleared in May Demonstration 
 
    by Evan Silverstein 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  - A federal judge has dismissed charges against three 
Presbyterians and 50 others arrested in Washington during a protest against 
an Army-operated training center that critics have accused of breeding 
terrorists. 
 
    The May 3 protest against the School of the Americas (SOA), a federally 
funded academy at Fort Benning, Ga., took place at the Pentagon. The SOA, 
which is staffed and managed by the U.S. Army, is known to its opponents as 
the "School of the Assassins," because its graduates include dictators, 
soldiers and paramilitary officers linked to brutal human-rights abuses in 
Latin America. 
 
    The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1994 became the first religious 
denomination to adopt an official policy calling for the closing of the 
SOA. Since then, church members, notably those of the Presbyterian Peace 
Fellowship, have taken part in non-violent demonstrations against the 
school. 
 
    Marilyn White, a co-chair of the Peace Fellowship who was among those 
arrested in May, said the dismissal of charges was "appropriate" in light 
of the non-violent nature of the protest. 
 
    "There were a lot of comments from the law-enforcement officers that we 
were well-behaved," White said by phone from her home in Houston, Texas. "I 
think the action is fair and just." 
 
    White and Peace Fellowship members Bill Galvin of Baltimore, Md., and 
the Rev. Clifford Frasier, of Jackson Heights, N.Y., were to appear in 
court this month. They were arrested after they helped other demonstrators 
paint red images of SOA victims on a Pentagon sidewalk. 
 
    U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas R. Jones signed an order in U.S. District 
Court in Alexandria, Va., on June 10, dismissing the charges without 
comment. 
 
    Some of those arrested, including White, had been charged during 
previous demonstrations and could have faced up to four months in prison as 
repeat offenders. 
 
    "The charges should be dropped since they were against those of us 
exercising our freedom of speech," said Frasier, associate pastor at Jan 
Hus Presbyterian Church in New York. "We were following our conscience to 
witness the unjust government-sponsored training of torture and subversive 
military strategies." 
 
    In the May demonstration, at least 50 Presbyterians joined an estimated 
2,000 SOA opponents, waving banners and reciting victims' names while 
circling the sprawling Army headquarters in Arlington, Va., in a procession 
nearly a mile long. Some protestors wore white death masks to commemorate 
SOA victims. 
 
    After Pentagon officials refused to allow the protesters to present 
evidence of inhumane acts to Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, some 
participants began outlining red body images in washable paint on a 
walkway. Pentagon police quickly arrested 60 people; 53 actually faced 
charges. 
 
    The protest was part of four days of vigils, music and mourning 
sponsored by the School of the Americas Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based 
organization. The group also stages a rally every November at Fort Benning, 
where it maintains an office. 
 
     Leaders of the school have said that inappropriate tactics are no 
longer taught there and that the curriculum includes a mandatory course in 
human rights. They contend that the SOA is largely responsible for the 
growth of democracy in Latin America. 
 
    "Whether they prosecute or don't prosecute, we're going to keep coming 
back," said Carol Richardson, co-director of School of the Americas Watch. 
"We're going to keep coming back until the school is closed." 

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