[NYTr] Bolivia to Withdraw from US School of the Assassins

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

SOAW via Common Dreams - Oct 10, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1010-04.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

School of the Americas Watch ---October 10, 2007

CONTACT: Joao Da Silva Phone (202) 234 3440/(202) 302 4706
media at soaw.org

Morales Announces End of Bolivian Military Training at ex-US Army
School of the Americas

Bolivia is the fifth Latin American country to announce a withdrawal
from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

WASHINGTON, DC - October 10 - President Evo Morales announced Tuesday
that Bolivia will gradually withdraw its military from training
programs at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
(WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA). Bolivia
is the fifth country after Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela
to announce a withdrawal from the Fort Benning school, citing its
history of collaborating with repressive regimes and human rights
abuses.

Morales, a former coca farmer and advocate of indigenous rights, 
criticized the institution for training Latin American militaries to 
identify social movement leaders as "enemies of the state." "We will 
gradually withdraw until there are no Bolivian officers attending the 
School of the Americas" said Morales. Questioning the U.S. government 
foreign policy he noted that "they are teaching high ranking officers
to confront their own people, to identify social movements as their
enemies."

The SOA/WHINSEC is a U.S. tax-payer funded military training facility
for Latin American security personnel located at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
The institution was catapulted into the headlines in 1996 when the
Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated
torture, extortion and execution.

The SOA/WHINSEC has played a significant role in Bolivia's recent 
political history, Hugo Banzer Suarez, who ruled Bolivia from 1971-1978 
under a brutal military dictatorship attended the school in 1956 and
was later inducted into the school's "hall of fame" in 1988. In October
of 2006, two former graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC, Generals Juan Veliz
Herrera and Gonzalo Rocabado Mercado were arrested on charges of
torture, murder, and violation of the constitution for their
responsibility in the death of 67 civilians in El Alto Bolivia during
the "Gas Wars" of September-October 2003.

In March 2006 a School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) delegation led by
Lisa Sullivan-Rodriguez, Salvadoran torture survivor Carlos Mauricio,
and SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois met with President Evo
Morales to request that Bolivia cease to send troops for training at
the SOA/WHINSEC.

On June 21, 2007 the McGovern/Lewis amendment to the FY 2008 Foreign 
Appropriations bill that would have prohibited funding for the
SOA/WHINSEC lost by a margin of only six votes. 203 members of Congress
voted in favor of the amendment to cut the funding for the school in
part due to its connection to human rights abuses throughout Latin
America.