> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MARCH 30, 2000 6:04 PM
>
> School of Americas Watch
> Randy Serraglio or Carol Richardson,
> SOA Watch (202) 234-3440 or (301) 318-1846
>
> April 2 & 3 - Thousands To Rally in Washington to Close the School of
> Americas
>
> WASHINGTON - March 31 - Thousands will gather in Washington DC this
> weekend at a rally at Lafayette Park Sun. April 2 (11am to 5pm) and a Lobby
> Day on the Capitol Steps (east) Mon. Apr. 3 (12-6pm). Later, the events will
> culminate with a nationwide fast Apr. 6-19, with thousands of groups and
> individuals participating in a juice-only fast in their home communities to
> call for the closing of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA).
>
> The SOA has trained about 60,000 Latin American military personnel over
> the last 50 years, mostly in counterinsurgency warfare. Soldiers take courses
> such as military intelligence, psychological operations, and commando
> tactics.
>
> In numerous human rights reports by the United Nations, the US State
> Department, and NGO's, its graduates have repeatedly been implicated in the
> worst human rights abuses in the hemisphere, including many assassinations
> and massacres in Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua,
> and elsewhere.
>
> Speakers from various related backgrounds will address the Sunday rally,
> including survivors of SOA-inspired violence, a Colombian human rights
> worker, an expert on global debt and the IMF/World Bank, a labor organizer,
> and SOA prisoners of conscience.
>
> The rally highlights the growing evidence against the infamous training
> facility. The most recent evidence includes the arrest of an SOA graduate
> two months ago for the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi in Guatemala,
> and a report released by Human Rights Watch last month showing direct
> ties between SOA graduates and the brutal paramilitaries in Colombia.
>
> On Monday and Tuesday April 3 & 4, citizens will lobby their congressmembers
> to co-sponsor HR 732, introduced by Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA), and S 873,
> introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), two bills that would summarily
> close the SOA.
> The House of Representatives passed a measure to cut SOA funding
> from the Foreign Operations bill last July, only to have it overturned by a
> single vote in conference committee a few weeks later.
>
> Nine SOA Watch protesters are facing sentencing soon for an action in
> November at Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia, where the SOA is located.
> They were convicted March 10 for trespassing in a solemn funeral procession
> onto the base last Nov. on the anniversary of the 1989 assassination of six
> Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 14-year-old daughter in El
> Salvador. 19 of the 26 officers cited as responsible for the crime were SOA
> graduates. Six more human rights defenders await a trial date for crossing
> the line after the March 10 trial.
>
> Human rights issues in Latin America continue to make headlines in the
> U.S., with a $1.6 billion aid package for Colombia pending in Congress. Over
> 80% of the controversial package takes the form of military aid to the
> Colombian security forces, which have the worst human rights record in the
> hemisphere.
>
> Colombia has sent 10,000 soldiers to the SOA, more than any other Latin
> American country. Its SOA graduates have been implicated in many human
> rights abuses, drug trafficking, and most recently, organizing and working
> closely with the paramilitaries, which are responsible for over 70% of the
> human rights abuses in Colombia.
>
> "The Congress is on the verge of repeating the mistakes we made in Central
> America in the 80's," says SOA Watch spokesman Randy Serraglio. Billions of
> dollars of U.S. military aid and training flowed to repressive regimes in
> throughout the 70's and 80's. Some of it was the same sort of special forces
> training that is being proposed in the Colombia package. In 1981, the
> Atlacatl Battalion, fresh from U.S. special forces training, massacred over
> 900 civilians in El Mozote, El Salvador. 10 of the 12 officers in charge
> were trained the SOA.
>
> On January 21 in Guatemala SOA-trained Col. Byron Disrael Lima Estrada was
> arrested for the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi. Bishop Gerardi was
> bludgeoned to death two days after he released a comprehensive human rights
> report on the Guatemalan civil war, called "Guatemala: Never Again." The
> report severely criticized the D-2, a notorious Guatemalan military
> intelligence agency headed by Lima Estrada in the mid-80's.
> It cited the D-2 for playing a "central role in the conduct of military
> operations, in massacres, in extra-judicial
> executions, forced disappearances and torture." Lima Estrada took Military
> Police training at the SOA.
>
> On March 23 it was announced that the U.S. Justice Dept. has reopened the
> investigation into the car bombing that killed Chilean dissident Orlando
> Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffitt in Washington DC in 1976. Former
> dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who recently avoided prosecution in Spain,
> is suspected of ordering the assassination. New evidence has prompted the
> Justice Dept. to consider bringing an indictment against Pinochet in the
> case.
>
> Ten of the top officers in the Pinochet regime were SOA grads. An FBI
> counterterrorism official was quoted: "You'e got to send a message with
> (terrorist) investigations, no matter how far back they go."
>
> The SOA events begin a month of intense activity surrounding U.S. foreign
> policy in the developing world, including upcoming actions on debt relief
> (Jubilee 2000) and the IMF. The SOA protests highlight the links between
> militarism and third world poverty and exploitation. "The nationwide fast is
> a powerful symbol of the hunger and poverty that militarism and the
> neoliberal economic model force upon people of the developing world,"
> says Serraglio.