Special report from the Presbyterian
Peace Fellowship
Twenty-six SOA Watch human rights protesters
sentenced
By Dwight Lawton [8-28-01]
Dwight Lawton served a six month sentence in federal
prison for participating in earlier protests at the School of the
Americas. He is a member of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship National
Committee.
You're invited to join the next
Presbyterian Peace Fellowship delegation to Fort Benning, Nov. 16
- 18.
On Monday May 21st I left St. Petersburg
with two Quaker friends and drove to Columbus, Georgia for the May 22nd
trial of 26 School of the Americas Watch protesters. This was to be my
fifth visit to this courthouse; the first two were mandatory. We arrived
in time to attend a reception and rally for the 26 who had been indicted
and to meet their supporters. This was a wonderful, inspirational way to
hear from these highly motivated people, ranging in age from 19 to 88,
who had decided that enough was enough and they could speak for the
voiceless.
As they were speaking at this reception and at their
trial the next day, I remembered the cold, wet, funeral procession into
Fort Benning on Sunday, November 20. The solemn and indescribably moving
procession commemorated the November 16, 1989 murder, in El Salvador, of
the six Jesuit Priests, their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter.
Of the 26 soldiers implicated in the deaths, 19 were graduates of this
school.
I was pleased to meet John Ewers, a Presbyterian elder
from Ohio, and now a member of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. At his
trial he spoke of his professional management experience and stated that
the SOA/WHISC is poorly managed in that the organization does not have
clearly stated objectives and does not follow up on the progress of its
graduates.
Fort Benning is home to the notorious School of the
Americas. It was recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation (WHISC) as a direct result of the eleven years of
protest and lobbying to close this School of the Assassins. The school
was founded in 1946 in Panama and moved to Ft. Benning in 1984. Over
60,000 Latin American soldiers trained at this school have left a trail
of blood and suffering in countries throughout Latin America.
Several defendants at the trial spoke of the
importance of speaking out against the horrible human rights abuses
taught at the SOA and that any penalty the federal magistrate might
impose would not deter them from continuing their efforts to close the
school. Many of those on trial expressed their awareness of the increase
in Pentagon activities throughout Latin America. They are aware of the
United States' new Forward Operating Locations at bases in Puerto Rico,
Ecuador, Honduras, the Dutch West Indies, Costa Rica and Colombia. They
understand the Pentagon has trained some of the hemisphere's worst human
rights abusers.
U.S. military influence in this region - indeed in the
world - is extensive and largely unexamined. Instead of the word
'globalization,' the more operative description seems to be
'imperialism.'
Even as the 26 were being sentenced, 11 other people
were engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience actions on the base and
were arrested. Three people walked onto the base, including Lana Jacobs,
wife of Steve Jacobs, who was sentenced to a year in prison. Three
activists removed the white line at the entrance to Fort Benning. Five
other protesters delivered a letter to Col. Richard Downie, director of
the SOA/WHISC, "banning and barring" the school from further
counterinsurgency training, training at odds with a respect for human
rights.
Join the
Presbyterian Peace Fellowship delegation to Fort Benning. We have
booked a block of rooms in Columbus, Georgia for 3 nights, November 16th,
17th, and 18th. We will arrange transportation
from the Atlanta airport on Friday, November 16, and from Columbus
back to Atlanta on Monday, November 19th.
For information,
please contact Marilyn White, (281) 332-1761 or marwhite@igc.org
