Catholics demand funding-cut for SOA
Right now, Catholic leaders are calling on their community to take a stand against the infamous School of the Americas. This Wednesday, the House will consider funding for the military training academy that has become a lightening rod for human rights-based criticism for years.
Pax Christi USA, a Catholic peace and justice organization, is mobilizing support for the McGovern amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. This amendment cuts off funding to The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), which is merely a new name for the School of the Americans. Its passage would be a major victory for human rights and the common good.
For years, religious leaders and human rights activists have criticized SOA/WHINSEC for teaching torture and assassination techniques to Latin American soldiers who have been linked with terrible human rights abuses in their respective countries. While attending a vigil at SOA/WHISC two years ago, I heard the testimony of torture victims of SOA grads that were strikingly similar to the instances of torture made public in the Abu Ghraib photos. Leaders of the movement argue that torture has long been part of U.S. military policy long before the Abu Ghraib scandal.
The efforts of this movement have born fruit abroad, with the governments of Costa Rica, Argentina and Uruguay announcing that they will no longer send students to the school, citing the negative image and history of this institution.
On June 18, Bishop Gabino Zavala sent a letter to Congress in support of the McGovern amendment. He is among 167 other U.S. Catholic Bishops who, since 2001, have added their voices in calling for the closure of the school.
The School of the Americans Watch, a group founded by Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, is providing specific steps for legislative action on their website.