April 19, 2002
43 Human Rights Activists Charged On Eve of Massive Demonstrations
A federal prosecutor filed charges against 43 human rights activists yesterday in Columbus, Georgia. The group was among
10,000 who gathered last November to call for the closure of the notorious School of the Americas, (renamed ³Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation²). The 43 nonviolent protesters crossed onto Ft. Benning, site of the
school. They face up to six months in federal prison and $5,000 in fines. A June trial date is expected.
School of the Americas (SOA) Watch, a national grassroots movement with a 12-year history of uncompromising nonviolent
direct action, is among the groups that have been organizing for the protests in Washington DC this weekend. SOA Watch
is mobilizing thousands to lobby, rally, march and engage in nonviolent direct action to call attention to the SOA and
US policy toward Colombia.
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.
³Those who speak out for justice are facing prison time while SOA-trained torturers and assassins are operating with
impunity,² 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.
³The SOA is the terrorist training camp in our own backyard,² 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.
Ends