Take Action Now!
From School of the Americas
Watch
From Abu Ghraib to
Latin America:
Pattern of abuse grows
Torture of Iraqi soldiers
indicative of ongoing policy of systematic and illegal abuse
[5-8-04]
Recent reports of the torture of Iraqi
detainees at the Abu Ghraib military prison near Baghdad are part of a
larger pattern of abuse and torture at the hands of U.S. soldiers,
U.S.-trained soldiers, "independent contractors" and intelligence agents
around the world. In fact, U.S. Army intelligence manuals advocating torture
techniques and how to circumvent laws on due process, arrest and detention
were used for at least a decade to train Latin American soldiers at the U.S.
Army's School of the Americas, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC.
"We see a consistent pattern of the
Pentagon claiming to work for democracy," says Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of
SOA Watch, "while in their prisons and training centers, reports of torture
and human rights abuses continue to surface."
Read the rest of the article at
http://www.soaw.org/new/
We've been contacted by many SOA Watch
activists this week asking what we can all be doing to make the connections
between torture in Iraq and torture in Latin America. Below are a few
suggestions of actions you can take today: