Not many detailed accounts of violence by the School of the Americas have been documented in Bolivia. However, a Catholic Priest, Roy Bourgeois witnessed several accounts of torture and abuse by graduates of the SOA. He worked with the poor in a Bolivia in the 1980s, and started the School of the Americas watch in 1990, a group that has been trying to shut down the SOA ever since. Bourgeois stated that torture has been a part of the schools curriculum ever since it opened in Panama in 1946. US Military officials deny training students torture techniques.
On the other hand, Bolivian President Evo Morales wrote a letter to Col. Gilberto Perez, a Commandant at the SOA (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Cooperation), stating that Bolivia will no longer send its military to attend the school in Fort Benning, Georgia. This letter was dated February 18, 2008. In March 2006, President Morales met with Lisa Sullivan-Rodriguez, Salvadoran torture survivor Carlos Mauricio, and SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois, where they asked him to stop sending Bolivian Military to the School.
3 comments:
Were the torture and interrogation techniques supposedly taught at the SOA really taught by course instructors or were they learned in Bolivia?
It is almost unbelievable the crimes humans inflict on other humans. This, right under our noses and with our money funding them. I hadn't heard of Bolivia's February decision. Good news!
Good job Ben. I did not know how much Bolivia fed into the SOA.
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