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News :: Miscellaneous |
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July 8 Trial Date Set for 43 Human Rights Activists for Civil Disobedience |
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by School Of the Americas Watch
(No verified email address) |
29 May 2002
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**Interviews With Defendants Available** |
COLUMBUS, GEORGIA - May 29 - Last week Federal Magistrate Faircloth announced a July 8 court date for 43 human rights activists charged with trespass for civil disobedience at the School of the Americas (renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Columbus, Georgia. The 43 were among 10,000 people who gathered last November to call for the closure of the notorious school. The defendants peacefully crossed onto Ft. Benning, site of the school. They face up to six months in federal prison and $5,000 in fines.
Judge Faircloth is known for giving the maximum of six months to opponents of the SOA/WHISC. Seventy-one people have served a total of over forty years in prison for engaging in nonviolent resistance in a broad-based campaign to close the school. Last year 26 people were prosecuted, including Dorothy Hennessey, an 88 year-old Franciscan nun who was sentenced to six months in federal prison.
"Those who speak out for justice are facing harsh prison sentences while SOA-trained torturers and assassins are operating with impunity," said SOA Watch founder Fr. Roy Bourgeois.
The SOA/WHISC is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers. Its graduates are consistently involved in human rights abuses and atrocities. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated the use of torture, extortion and execution. In December 2000 Congress authorized the WHISC to replace the SOA. The renaming of the school was widely viewed as an attempt to diffuse public criticism and to disassociate the school from its reputation. SOA Watch maintains that the underlying purpose of the school, to control the economic and political systems of Latin America by aiding and influencing Latin American militaries, remains the same.
"The SOA is the terrorist training camp in our own backyard," said Bourgeois.
SOA Watch works to stand in solidarity with people of Latin America, to change oppressive US foreign policy, and to close the SOA/WHISC.
Contact for Interviews: Matthew Smucker 202.903.7257 |
See also:
www.soaw.org/
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