Former School of Americas celebrates year of changing focus

Posted 7:47AM on Friday 1st February 2002 ( 23 years ago )

FORT BENNING - The controversial Fort Benning academy formerly known as the School of the Americas celebrated a year of changing focus this week. The school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, marked its first anniversary under the new name and new mission by hosting a Human Rights Week. Among the guests were leaders from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Rotary International, the U.S. State Department and a Costa Rican environmental organization. The Human Rights Week program underscores efforts by the Department of Defense to shake the reputation of the School of the Americas, an Army-run training academy for Latin American soldiers that moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984. For more than a decade, protesters have held annual demonstrations at the post to commemorate the Nov. 16, 1989, killings in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, to which some of the school's graduates were linked. The demonstrators, sponsored by a group called School of Americas Watch, claim that the school shared responsibility for that and other human rights abuses by the military in Latin American countries. Thousands participated in the protests over the years, and many were arrested for trespassing on the post including Roman Catholic priests and nuns. There were congressional efforts to shutter the school permanently when the Defense Department closed it down in Dec. 15, 2000, and opened the Western Hemisphere Institute a few weeks later. Officials say the new facility, operated by the Defense Department instead of the Army, focuses more on civilian and diplomatic affairs than military training. The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest who founded the SOA Watch, said the institute was no different from the school it replaced. More than 6,000 protesters turned up for the demonstration in November, so the battle for image control continues. Officials of the institute say it is now a strategic think tank for Latin America's military, police and government-related civilians and U.S. soldiers to address regional conflicts, disaster relief, international crime, narcotics trafficking, illegal immigration, money laundering and terrorism. Distancing itself from the human rights abuses associated with its predecessor, the institute's ``Human Rights Week'' included a tour of the Civil War-era Andersonville Prisoner of War Museum; a lecture by Pedro Matta, who was tortured by Chile's military-backed DINA in the 1970s; and presentations involving the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. On Thursday, the program concluded with a panel discussion involving the cooperation between governmental and non-governmental organizations in the hemisphere. The session centered on cooperation between the Latin America's police and military and organizations such as the Red Cross.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/2/199351