|
Back
|
Close The School of the Americas
Hawkins Urges Congress to Cut Funding for School of the Americas |
“Ending terrorism must begin at home,” says Green Party candidate for US Senate
(Syracuse) Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for US Senate from New York, today called on the House of Representatives to cut funding to the School of Americas.
Congress is set to vote this week on the amendment sponsored by Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) to eliminate funding for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly named and popularly known as the School of the Americas. Established in 1946, the School of the Americas has trained military officers who have led right-wing death squads in several Latin American countries for the past half-century.
“The names of School of Americas graduates read like an honor role of dictators, torturers, and murderers--Manuel Noriega, Hugo Banzer Suárez, Leopoldo Galtieri, Efraín Ríos Montt, Vladimiro Montesinos, Guillermo Rodríguez, Omar Torrijos, Roberto Viola, Roberto D'Aubuisson, and Juan Velasco Alvarado. Indeed, training manuals used by the School from the 1980s, released to the public during the last decade, show that US military and CIA personnel trained Latin Americn military officers in the use of torture. Techniques used by these death squads in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the 1980s mimic the recommendations found in these declassified manuals,” said Hawkins, a former Marine who organized opposition to the Vietnam war.
Annual demonstrations at the School of the Americas’ headquarters in Fort Benning, Georgia have been growing for 16 years ago. The first demonstration drew 10 people. 20,000 protested in 2005. Several South American governments have recently refused to send officers to the School. These governments include Uruguay, Argentina, and Venezuela, which say their populations have been victimized in the past by torture and murder by counterinsurgency forces trained at the School of the Americas.
“The School of Americas should have been closed a long time ago. I urge our Representatives in Congress to support Rep. McGovern’s amendment. Ending terrorism must begin at home,” said Hawkins.
|
| |
 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
|
|
