The [Salvadoran] death squads did exactly what they were supposed to do: they decapitated the trade unions and mass organizations that seemed in danger of setting off an urban insurrection at the beginning of the decade… [The army] learnt its tricks at American counterinsurgency schools in Panama and the United States. We learnt from you, a death squad member once told an American reporter, we learnt from you the methods, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls. And political prisoners often insist they were tortured by foreigners, some Argentine, others maybe American.

Much has been said about countries like, USA, Russia, UK etc selling arms and training human rights violators but this has never made much media coverage — only in the extreme cases such as the UK’s use of mercenaries which has come under fire due to recent events in Sierra Leone and training Indonesian military who have waged a brutal campaign in East Timor in the past.

School of the Americas

A very informative documentary (called School of the Americas: At War with Democracy? , by the Center for Defense Information, 1994) describes how a US military training school, the School of the Americas, has trained many of the worst human rights violators and dictators in various Latin American countries.

Countries receiving training include Haiti, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The school is a military training school originally in Panama, now in Georgia, USA, set up and run by USA.

At the School of the Americas (SOA), portraits of the most successful graduates are hung. Some of the worst dictators and human rights abusers in the developing world have passed through the school’s doors, including people like Roberto D’Aubisson from El Salvador and Manuel Noriega of Panama.

The main point of the documentary was how the Army maintain that the school was set up to preserve democracy.

This has remained a political issue in the United States for quite some time. Some have wanted to see a change of emphasis for the school, to a counter-narcotics role. However, others have wanted a complete closure of the school calling it a relic from the Cold War days.

A setback for the school occurred in July 1999, where the US House of Representatives unexpectedly voted to withdraw funding from the notorious School. While this did not result in the school being closed, it did show that pressure from human rights groups and others, could pay off.

And each year thousands of people go to the school to hold protests. 1999 for example, saw record 12,000 protestors then regarded as the largest act of civil disobedience in the U.S. since the Vietnam War. It made a few news headlines, but not many.

However, in 1999 there was an announcement to make changes to the SOA, including its name, from School of the Americas to Center for Inter-American Security Cooperation. By a margin of 10 votes, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to close off the School. The catch was that it would be reopened with a new name. On January 17, 2001 the SOA was replaced and renamed with the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC)). Despite claims previously that the focus of the school might change, as the previous link from School of the Americas Watch reports, the changes were just cosmetic:

In a media interview last year [2000], Georgia Senator and SOA supporter, the late Paul Coverdell, characterized the DOD proposal as cosmetic changes that would ensure that the SOA could continue its mission and operation. Critics of the SOA concur. The new military training school is the continuation of the SOA under a new name. Critique of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, School of the Americas Watch

With the terrorist attacks on the United States, September 11 2001, and the subsequent retaliation and rhetoric about harboring, training and supporting terrorists, a few commentators have noted the irony, such as George Monbiot in this article, which appeared in the British paper, The Guardian .

More information on the School of the Americas can be found at the following web sites:

The School of the Americas Watch web site. This has some interesting information including a comprehensive list of human rights violators who have been to the School and even some training manuals used by the school.

This alert from the Campaign for Labor Rights, mentions how some of the training manuals advocate various interrogation techniques such as torture, blackmail, execution and arrest of relatives.

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