Costa Rica Quits the School of the Americas (The Nation)

BLOG | Posted 05/17/2007 @ 5:16pm
Costa Rica Quits SOA



Costa Rican President Oscar Arias announced yesterday that his country will stop sending police to train at the US Army Ft. Benning facility, citing its history of involvement in military coups and human rights abuses throughout Latin America.

Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, made the decision after talks with a delegation of the School of the Americas Watch, including the Rev. Roy Bourgeois and Lisa Sullivan Rodriguez. The human rights advocacy group has campaigned since 1990 for the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA), located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

As I wrote in this space last month, the SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence, interrogation tactics, and, yes, torture. These graduates have consistently used their skills against their own people, frequently on behalf of anti-democratic US-supported governments.

Costa Rica is the fourth Latin American country to announce a withdrawal from the SOA/WHINSEC. In 2006, the governments of Argentina and Uruguay announced that they would cease all training at the school, and in January of 2004, Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela would no longer send troops to train at the school.

Costa Rica has no army but has sent approximately 2,600 police officers over the years for training. Minor Masis, leader of Costa Rica's former "Comando Cobra" anti-drug squad attended the School in 1991 and returned to Costa Rica, only to serve a 42-year jail term for rape and murder committed during a 1992 drug raid. Costa Rica currently has three policemen at the center. But, "when the courses end for the three policemen we are not going to send any more," Arias told the press.

Costa Rica's decision is a great victory for human rights in Latin America and a decisive rejection of the idea that combat training and military spending are a means of solving social problems and bringing about peace and democracy.

Check out the SOA Watch website for tips on what you can do to help close the school's door permanently for all nations, and check out this YouTube interview with SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois to learn more about the school's bloody history.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow?bid=4&pid=196436

Some times this country shames me.

School of the Americas:
School of Assassins, USA



The School of the Americas

World War II was the "good war". After that conflict, most Americans believed that US intentions in the world were noble -- the US was the punisher of aggression and a warrior for freedom. This image was for generations of Americans the measure by which they judged their country in world affairs. The war in Vietnam ended the illusion that America was always on the "right side". Today, America's image as a defender of democracy and justice has been further eroded by the School of the Americas (SOA), which trains Latin American and Caribbean military officers and soldiers to subvert democracy and kill hope in their own countries.

Founded by the United States in 1946, the SOA was initially located in Panama, but in 1984 it was kicked out under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty and moved to the army base at Fort Benning, Georgia. Then-President of Panama Jorge Illueca called it "the biggest base for de-stabilization in Latin America," and a major Panamanian newspaper dubbed it " The School of Assassins."

Today, SOA instructors and students are recruited from the cream of the Latin American military establishment. The School trains 700-2,000 soldiers a year, and since its inception in 1946, more than 60,000 military personnel have graduated from the SOA.

If the SOA concentrated its training on protecting country borders from foreign aggression or safeguarding citizens from invasion by outside enemies, it would be considered an exemplary institution, worth the cost of American tax dollars and US prestige. But, the SOA has very different goals. Its curriculum includes courses in psychological warfare, counterinsurgency, interrogation techniques, and infantry and commando tactics. Presented with the most sophisticated and up-to-date techniques by the US Army's best instructors, these courses teach military officers and soldiers of Third World countries to subvert the truth, to muzzle union leaders, activist clergy, and journalists, and to make war on their own people. It prepares them to subdue the voices of dissent and to make protesters submit. It instructs them in techniques of marginalizing the poor, the hungry, and the dispossessed. It tells them how to stamp out freedom and terrorize their own citizens. It trains them to destroy the hope of democracy.

The School of the Americas (SOA) has been given other names -- "School for Dictators", "School of Assassins", and "Nursery of Death Squads". And, countries with the worst human rights records send the most soldiers to the School.

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/SOA.html