July 21, 2000

DGH Call for the Closure of the SOA

CALL FOR THE IMMEDIATE CLOSURE OF THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS (SOA), RENAMED THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY COOPERATION (WHISC)

Doctors for Global Health (DGH) is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit, Volunteer, humanitarian organization dedicated to the promotion of health, education and other Human rights in the United States, Central America and throughout the world. Officially incorporated in 1995, DGH was born from the experience and inspiration of Volunteers from the United States doing Health and Human Rights fieldwork in El Salvador, France, Mexico and other countries.

DGH encourages and welcomes Volunteers from all walks of life, including physicians and other health workers, students and teachers. At present DGH has more than 200 supporting Volunteers who either work from their own communities around the world or work in DGH-related projects in El Salvador, Uganda, the United States, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras and Chiapas, Mexico. DGH is administered by an elected board drawn mostly from past and present Volunteers, a diverse group ranging in age from 22 to 85. The Advisory Council consists of more than 150 persons with a vast amount of international and national experience in promoting health, education, community medicine, social justice and Human Rights.

DGH Volunteers have worked closely with Salvadorans who experienced first-hand repression and atrocities from Salvadoran soldiers trained at the School of the Americas (SOA), renamed The Western Hemisphere Institute For Security Cooperation (WHISC). We therefore present the following resolution for its immediate closure.

WHEREAS, the US Army School of the Americas (SOA)/(WHISC) at Fort Benning, Georgia, has provided training for over 59,000 Latin American military personnel, and is currently training hundreds of such soldiers and that this training has resulted in the assassination of religious leaders, labor organizers, human rights advocates, and the massacre of thousands of the unarmed poor; and

WHEREAS, the School of the Americas (SOA)/(WHISC) teaches such things as assassination training, commando operations, counter-insurgency techniques, intelligence-gathering, psychological warfare, extortion, sniper training, and low-intensity conflict; and Pentagon documents released to School of the Americas Watch, in September of 1996, through the Freedom of Information Act, show that training manuals at least through the nineteen-eighties at the School of the Americas/WHISC included instruction in such things as extortion, assassination, threats and torture; and

WHEREAS, over 75 percent of those cited by the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador for murder, massacres, torture and "disappearances" were trained at School of the Americas/WHISC; and

WHEREAS, the same report states that ten of twelve officers of the Salvadoran army battalion that carried out the 1981 massacre in El Mozote, where more than 900 unarmed civilians were killed, including many children under the age of five, were graduates of the School of the Americas/WHISC; and

WHEREAS, people of faith, working in solidarity with people in Central America, have been murdered by soldiers trained at School of the Americas/WHISC. These include in El Salvador alone: three officers responsible for the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, which was planned and ordered by Roberto D'Aubuisson, organizer of El Salvador's death squad network; nineteen of the twenty-six officers cited for planning and carrying out the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter; and

WHEREAS, many graduates of the School of the Americas/WHISC have been cited for Human Rights abuses and drug trafficking, including Gen. Manuel Noriega of Panama, Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador, Gen. Hector Gramajo of Guatemala, and Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia; as well as others in Argentina, Colombia, Honduras and Peru; and

WHEREAS, since the 1994 uprising in Chiapas, Mexico has had the highest number of Latin American military personnel receiving SOA/WHISC military training; and Representative Joseph Kennedy's January 12, 1998, "Dear Colleague" letter directly linked School of the Americas graduates to the December 22, 1997, massacre in Acteal, Chiapas; and Amnesty International reports that throughout 1997 the Mexican Army committed "widespread Human Rights violations" in Chiapas; and

WHEREAS, the civilian population of Colombia has been caught in the crossfire of a bloody civil war for decades; and over 10,000 School of the Americas/WHISC graduates possess the worst Human Rights record in all of Latin America; and of the $1.3 billion US aid package known as Plan Colombia, more than 75% is in the form of military assistance; and SOA-trained general, Mario Montoya Uribe, who commands Joint Task Force South, which receives all US military aid under Plan Colombia and whose command include the 24th Brigade, which is ineligible for US military assistance due to complicity with paramilitary violence against civilians; and

WHEREAS, the Latin American Working Group, a project of the National Council of Churches, in a February 12, 1998, report revealed severe, ongoing problems in curriculum oversight at the School of the Americas/WHISC, and a complete lack of monitoring of School of the Americas graduates; and

WHEREAS, millions of dollars of US taxpayer money is spent annually to maintain the School of the Americas/WHISC at a time when budgets are being cut at the expense of our own schools and children, and the US Congress is currently reducing Federal spending on many social services; and

WHEREAS, nationwide outrage over the School of the Americas' activities continues to grow, including resolutions and statements urging closing the School of the Americas/WHISC now passed by many religious, professional, civic, Human Rights, and environmental organizations; and 10,000 people from all parts of the US gathered at Fort Benning, Georgia, in November 2000 to protest the School, up from thirty who protested there at the same time in 1995; and some seventy US citizens have been prosecuted, and collectively sentenced to more than forty years of prison time over the past ten years for their petitioning for the closing of the School of the Americas/WHISC, yet its graduate officers cited by the United Nations Truth Commission for atrocities in El Salvador have not been imprisoned; and

WHEREAS, this history and the continued existence of the School of the Americas/WHISC stand in the way of moving our country's relationships with Latin America towards emphasis on Human Rights and democracy;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED:

THAT, Doctors for Global Health urges individuals to urge their Congressional representatives to co-sponsor H.R. 1810 or its equivalent (or to recommend them if they already have), advocate for its immediate passage, and take all other appropriate action to secure the closure of the School of the Americas/WHISC;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT, Doctors for Global Health asks the Department of Justice to investigate the criminal liability for teaching extortion, assassination, torture and related acts of violence, included as subjects in the training manuals for the School of the Americas/WHISC, and requests a Congressional investigation to determine the accountability of those persons who ordered, prepared, and distributed the School of the Americas, renamed WHISC, torture manuals in direct defiance of the United States and international law.

ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY this day, July 21, 2000, at the Doctors for Global Health annual General Assembly, held in Kalamazoo, in the state of Michigan, United States of America.

In Health and Human Rights,

Doctors for Global Health Board of Directors

Lanny Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H; Stephen Miller, MD; Shirley Novak, MA; Clyde Smith, MSc; Renée Smith, Med; Wendy Hobson, MD; Audrey Lenhart, MA; Joy Mockbee, MD, MPH; Timothy Holtz, MD, MPH; Jennifer Kasper, MD, MPH; Daniel Bausch, MD, MPH; Monica Sanchez; Linnea Capps, MD, MPH; Wendy Johnson, MD; John MacArthur, MD, MPH; Lisa Madden, MD, MS; Gerald Paccione, MD; Andrew Schiavoni, MD; Bruce Martin, Esq.