wfn.org | School of the Americas closing or just changing its name?

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Dec. 20, 2000  News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.     10-71B{579}

By United Methodist News Service

The U.S. Army has closed its controversial School of the Americas (SOA) at
Fort Benning, Ga., but some critics aren't so sure.

Flags were lowered Dec. 15 at SOA ceremonies presided over by Secretary of
the Army Louis Caldera and SOA Commandant Col. Glenn Weidner.  

In January, the school is to reopen as the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation, answering to the Department of Defense instead of the
Army.  It will continue to train soldiers and civilians from 22 Latin
American countries, the United States, English-speaking Caribbean and
possibly Canada.

For 38 years, the SOA was based in Panama at Fort Gullick, overlooking the
Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal.  It was relocated to Georgia in 1984
under the terms of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties.

The House approved plans earlier this year to close the school after demands
from a number of politicians.  The United Methodist Council of Bishops,
Washington-based Board of Church and Society, and General Conference called
for the SOA to close.  

Retired United Methodist clergyman, the Rev. Charles Butler, was recently
released from prison in Minnesota after serving three months for trespassing
on Fort Benning property during a large demonstration in November 1999,
sponsored by the School of the Americas Watch. (See UMNS story  #574).

Regarding the recent changes at SOA, Butler said, "new name, same shame."
He said SOA Watch is planning protests in several cities across the nation
Jan. 17, the day when the new institute is to officially open.  He plans to
participate in a protest in Minneapolis.  

Butler said SOA has made the changes hoping the institute will be less
visible  "The opposite will happen," he predicts.  "People will work to get
it clarified."  

Weidner objects to the charge that the SOA is continuing with a new name.
"There will be expanded courses, far beyond traditional military training,
including civilian faculty," he said.  "The institute offers a real
opportunity for useful dialogue.  It's tragic that opponents are trying to
impugn and malign the new institute instead of looking at it as an
opportunity."
  
The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest who founded the SOA Watch
organization in 1990, said the name change is "window dressing." 

"Nobody is fooled by this," he said. "For many of us this is like taking a
bottle of poison and calling it penicillin. It is still deadly."  He said
the school will continue to be a combat school for Latin American soldiers
and will revolve around combat skills.  

Bourgeois' SOA Watch office is located just outside the main entrance to
Fort Benning. He was a naval officer for four years, served a year in
Vietnam and received the Purple Heart.  After his ordination as a Catholic
priest in 1972 he worked with the poor in Bolivia for five years. In 1980,
he became involved in El Salvador after four U.S. churchwomen were raped and
killed by Salvadoran soldiers.  Two of the nuns were his friends.  In 1994,
he worked on a documentary film about the SOA called "School of Assassins"
which received an Academy Award nomination.

Regardless of the name, the institute will still be about "men with guns,"
Bourgeois said. "For many of us as people of faith, we look at the
newly-named school and its curriculum and we do not see in any way how these
courses will contribute to healing the suffering of people.  That for so
many of us is the starting point, the reality of Latin America where a vast
majority of our sisters and brothers are struggling for survival."  He said
the newly named institute would continue to train soldiers "in skills that
will not prepare them to improve the quality of life in their countries."

He said his SOA Watch movement is not going away.  "We will continue to
gather at Fort Benning's main gate every November to keep alive the memories
of the victims, to use our voices for the voiceless and this spring, we will
go to Washington to lobby our representatives and senators to cut all
funding to this newly-named school.  For us, it is still the 'school of
assassins."

Weidner said accusations that the school had been teaching torture, rape and
murder are "ridiculous.  It never happened."  Pointing to the Organization
of American States (OAS) Charter, he said,   "We are all part of an
inter-American system, a security system."

Article 2 of the OAS calls for strengthening the peace and security of the
continent, promotion of representative democracy "with due respect for the
principle of nonintervention," and prevention of difficulties and settlement
of disputes.  It also calls for "common action" by member states in the
event of aggression and search for solution of political, juridical, and
economic problems that might arise among them.  

The charter calls for promotion of economic, social and cultural
development; the eradication of extreme poverty "which constitutes an
obstacle to the full democratic development of the peoples of the
hemisphere," and an "effective limitation of conventional weapons that will
make it possible to devote the largest amount of resources to the economic
and social development of the member states."

Weidner says the purpose of the SOA and the new institute is to support the
OAS charter.  "These are things that are out there in international
agreements that we are all committed to and our military policy is to
support," he said.

He stressed the new institute would be looking forward.  "Our threat is no
longer Soviet Communism. We are not mired in the cold war.   The threat is
more diverse."

Commenting on the charges by SOA critics, Weidner said "They see all of
Latin America as nothing more than military dictatorships oppressing the
poor. It is much more complex today. These countries are governed
overwhelmingly by civilian leadership embarked on free market reform. Those
are the challenges. We need an integrated system where we are talking to one
another rather than marginalizing the militaries of those countries from
useful dialogues."

During the Dec. ceremonies at Fort Benning, Army Secretary Caldera also
spoke of the charges against the SOA.   At no time did the school teach
torture tactics or train dictators, he declared.

"Any soldier in Latin America who had even the most remote connection to the
School of the Americas, who has ever committed a human rights violation, did
so in spite of the training they received at the School of the Americas and
not because of it," Caldera said. 

# # #

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org