America's terrorist training school:
soaw.org
In 1999, the United Nations Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) released a
report documenting human rights violations in Guatemala during its 36-year internal war.
This report charges the Guatemalan government with waging a campaign of "genocide"
against the indigenous population, and cites the Guatemalan security forces as being
responsible for 93 percent of the human rights abuses that resulted in more than 200,000
deaths and "disappearances." The report also singles out the kind of training offered at
the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) as having "had a significant bearing on
human rights violations during the armed confrontation." Earlier this year (2000)
President Portillo of Guatemala cited 2 officers in the bludgeoning death of human rights
champion Bishop Juan Gerardi. Col. Lima Estrada, one of those cited, is an SOA
gradute.
The aggressive, racist plot of the government against the indigenous population included
the massacre of entire communities, resulting in the complete elimination and massacre of
at least 626 communities. The vast majority of those tortured and killed were Mayan.
Torture, assassinations, and scorched-earth genocidal tactics were not aberrations or the
work of rogue sadists in remore places. They were committed as a specific strategy, as
part of a counterinsurgency campaign in which such acts of savagery were used
systematically by the armed forces to incite terror, humiliation, and suffering.
soaw-ne.org |
