Two PC(USA) pastors indicted
School of Americas protesters charged with
trespassing on military base
Note: The
two pastors have now been sentenced to 3 and 6 months in federal
prison. [7-19-02]
by Alexa Smith, Presbyterian News Service
[5-21-02]
LOUISVILLE - 20-May-2002 - Two Presbyterian Church (USA) pastors are
among 43 protesters indicted in federal court last month for trespassing
on a military base in Georgia.
The Rev. Chuck Booker-Hirsch, of Ann Arbor, MI, and
the Rev. Erik Johnson, of Maryville, TN, were arrested during the annual
School of Americas Watch (SAW) protest last November.
An estimated 10,000 protesters were on hand, but only
43 went onto federal property, inviting arrest.
The military base near Columbus, GA, is home to the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), formerly
known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where Central and South
American military personnel are trained.
The name change came after the Pentagon released
manuals in 1996 substantiating activists' claims that techniques taught
at the school included torture, assassination and extortion. Since then,
human-rights courses have been added to the curriculum, and a board of
oversight has been established.
The indictments were filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney
Dean Daskal in Columbus. The clergymen could be imprisoned for six
months and fined $5,000. Trial dates have not been set.
Seventy-one SAW activists have been jailed since 1983,
when the group began its non-violent demonstrations, which have included
fasts and prayer vigils as well as incursions onto government property.
The protests are held every Nov. 16 to mark the anniversary of the
killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in the 1980s.
Booker-Hirsch and Johnson are not the first
Presbyterians charged with trespassing in connection with the
demonstrations. Elder John Ewers, of Dayton, OH, and another layperson,
Dwight Lawton, of St. Petersburg, FL, have served time in federal
prison.
Ewers and his wife, Paula, attend Dayton's Community
Hill Presbyterian Church, where Ewers is clerk of session. They were
arrested again on April 30 when they were among 10 activists who refused
to leave the Dayton office of Sen. Mike DeWine.
DeWine was one of the architects of "Plan
Colombia," the Clinton administration's campaign to fumigate coca
plants and provide $1.3 billion in military aid to Colombia for its
fight against drug traffickers. The Presbyterian Church of Colombia has
opposed aerial fumigation, which it says kills indiscriminately.
De Wine is also a key supporter of the Bush
administration's plans to increase military aid to Colombia.
The Ewers were charged with trespassing and resisting
arrest.
In a May 17 letter to his Ann Arbor congregation at
Northside Presbyterian Church, Booker-Hirsch said he has been involved
in efforts to ease the plight of Latin American refugees since the early
1980s.
"One of the primary causes for (the refugees')
flight north," he said, "(is) the training of Latin American
military officers, still ongoing, in the uses of psychological and
counterinsurgency warfare, and even methods of torture … through
military resources offered at SOA/WHSC."
Booker-Hirsch said "thousands" of graduates
have been implicated in the killings of priests, nuns and social workers
and in massacres of entire villages.
Johnson has been arrested for trespassing once before,
but the charge is the first for Booker-Hirsch, who said the government,
by its decision to begin arresting first-time offenders, "is
sending a message to discourage future non-violent direct action to call
attention to the school and what is going on there."
Matthew Smucker, SOAW's media coordinator, told the
Presbyterian News Service (PNS) that his organization has
"absolutely no indication" that the training offered at the
school has changed much since its name change.
Smucker expressed outrage that first-time trespassers
may be jailed, while SOA/WHSC graduates still practice
"assassination and torture."
"We think it is draconian that (protesters)
receive these sentences … for standing up this way," he said.
Johnson, a longtime activist on Central American
issues, said the church of which he is interim pastor, the Church of the
Savior, a United Church of Christ congregation in Knoxville, TN, has
pledged to support him.
"I was initially shaken" upon learning of
the indictment, he said, but has accepted that he may go to prison.
"I'm at peace with that," he said
A PC(USA) pastor for 33 years, Johnson is a co-chair
of the Peacemaking Committee of the Presbytery of East Tennessee.
"I'm not living any differently than I was at the
beginning of my ministry," he said, adding that he is
"immersed in the teaching of non-violence in the church. ...
Non-violence is central to the Gospel of reconciliation."
Daskal's office did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
