Thousands protest in Georgia against Army's 'school of assassins'
Copyright © 1998 Nando Media Copyright © 1998 Reuters News Service
COLUMBUS, Ga. (November 22, 1998 6:09 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Thousands of protesters gathered Sunday in the largest-ever demonstration against the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, a military training center where opponents say Latin
American soldiers learn torture.
By late morning, crowds lined both sides of an entrance road and some protesters began marching onto the grounds of the U.S. Army's Fort Benning, about 85 miles southwest of Atlanta.
Many carried white crosses they said represented victims of some of the school's almost 60,000 graduates.
Actor Martin Sheen was among those who spoke to a crowd organizers estimated at about 7,000. Columbus Police spokesman Lt. M.C. Todd estimated the crowd at fewer than 2,500.
"We have nothing against the Army. The Army has a proud tradition. We're asking it to take responsibility for people it trained in Central and South America," Sheen told reporters.
Organizers said 2,319 people risked arrest by entering the base, which critics say has turned out a steady stream of Latin American dictators, torturers and rogues.
Graduates include former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, former Argentine dictator Leopoldo
Galtieri, Haitian coup leader Raoul Cedras and Salvadoran death squad organizer the late Roberto D'Aubuisson.
Opponents in Congress, led by Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Joseph Kennedy, have so far failed
in efforts to cut funding for the school.
Attendance at Sunday's gathering was larger than at eight previous annual protests, which mark the anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989, killings of six Jesuit priests by a Salvadoran army unit. The school trained 19 of the 26 soldiers implicated in the deaths by a United Nations investigation.
"We gather here to honor our brothers and sisters in Latin America," protest leader the Rev. Roy Bourgeois told supporters. "We will close the School of the Americas."
About 2,000 demonstrators protested last year and more than 600 of them were arrested when they entered the military post. About three dozen people who had been arrested for previous protests were convicted of criminal trespass earlier this year and sentenced to six months in prison and fined $3,000
each.
Army officers say the school, which moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, from Panama in 1984, has helped advance democracy in Latin America and that it has
reformed its curriculum to stress respect for human rights.
Opponents say it is a "school of assassins," whose
graduates they say also include several Chilean officers accused along with former dictator Augusto Pinochet of genocide, terrorism and torture.
Fort Benning officials held a debate about the school Saturday, but opponents declined to participate when they were told they could not carry cardboard
coffins onto the buses that would transport them to the event.
Protesters at the base on Saturday carried banners
reading "Close the School of the Assassins," "La Sangre Esta en Tus Manos" (Blood is on your hands)
and "Stop the Oppression of Latin American Peasants." A man wearing a skeleton costume strode through the crowd on stilts.
By MIKE COOPER, Reuters