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Public Employee Press
Training the torturers
The Bush administration has described torture
at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as the work of a few bad apples.
In
reality, the incidents of torture are consistent with long-standing practices
of the U.S. government. For decades, the United States has trained Latin American
military personnel in counterinsurgency techniques, including torture, at the
School of the Americas.
Union leaders and activists in Latin America have
often been targeted for murder or arrest by security forces, including SOA graduates.
Many U.S. unions including the AFL-CIO and DC 37s parent union, the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have called
for closing the facility.
Torture has been part of our foreign policy
for years, said Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas
Watch, which also advocates shuttering the torture school.
In 1996, under
public pressure, the Pentagon released several SOA training manuals that recommend
using torture, false imprisonment, blackmail and even execution to battle insurgents.
The manuals were based on U.S. military and CIA manuals written in the 1950s and
1960s.
The School of the Americas was established in 1946 in Panama, and
later moved to Fort Benning, Ga. Stung by its notoriety, the school changed its
name in 2001 to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
Over
six decades, the school has trained 60,000 Latin American military and police
personnel. Military repression in Latin America in recent decades has resulted
in hundreds of thousands of deaths and unexplained disappearances. SOA manuals
recommended targeting for interrogation people who support union organizing
or recruiting, as well as others who distribute propaganda in favor
of the interests of workers or sympathize with demonstrators or strikes.
Today,
SOA graduates stand accused of being responsible for the murder of union activists
in Colombia, which is regarded as the worlds most dangerous country for
union members. GNH | |