Starting Date: 11-18-2011
Ending Date: 11-20-2011
Ft. Benning, Georgia 31905
United StatesAnother year goes by, and the crimes of graduates and instructors of the SOA/WHINSEC continue to strengthen our resolve to shut down the SOA. This December will mark the 30th anniversary of the massacre of close to 800 indigenous villagers in the El Mozote region of El Salvador. Still, graduates of the SOA are leading the repression, killing hundreds and displacing thousands of Hondurans. Mexicans and immigrants passing through Mexico are the target of drug cartels and death squads like the "Zetas" - another product of SOA training. In the midst of the continuing war in Colombia, fueled by SOA violence, union killings touched 51 in 2010.
In Guatemala, General Mario Fuentes Lopez was arrested for genocide against that country's indigenous people in the 1980s; General Fuentes Lopez was a graduate of the SOA. Pedro Pimentel Rios, a member of the notorious Kaibiles (Guatemalan Special Forces), who was became an instructor one month after his participation in the Dos Erres massacre in 1982, was arrested and extradited to Guatemala. A member of the Zetas and former Mexican Special Forces member, Jesus Enrique Rejón Aguilar, was arrested and confessed that he helped to recruit Mexican Special Forces members trained at Ft. Benning.
Enough is enough. WE MUST CLOSE THE SOA AND END OPPRESSIVE U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. From across the hemisphere, activists will once again stand at the gates of Ft. Benning and demand a closure of the SOA/WHINSEC - under any name. We reject racist notions of "benevolent intervention" - military or otherwise - and celebrate the self-determination of the peoples of the Americas. Justice will be ours.
We are building new connections in struggle, and we invite you and your networks to accompany us again this year.
This year, with anti-immigration laws like HB87 in Georgia increasing state terror in immigrant communities, the SOA Watch Vigil at Ft. Benning will make the connections between the struggle against racist immigration laws and oppressive US foreign policy in Latin America. Together, we are stronger and will create a new world.
Please see below for links to more information on ways that you can help to build the movement, and organize for the 2011 Vigil. New information will be continuously posted, so check back frequently!Geographical Scope: National Protest |
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