Trespass as protest - School of the Americas

Christian Century, May 15, 1996

In a trial that looked beyond the official charge--criminal trespass at a U.S. Army base-to issues of free speech, religious conviction and U.S. foreign policy, Catholic priest Roy Bourgeois of Lutcher, Louisiana, was found guilty April 29 and sentenced to the maximum six months in prison in connection with protests at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the controversial School of the Americas.

It was the third time that Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, former Navy lieutenant awarded a Purple Heart in Vietnam, and longtime antiwar activist, had been sentenced for protests at the base. He and nine co-defendants, including a 74-year-old Ursuline nun, two World War 11 veterans, a mother of eight, a lawyer and, a psychologist, were arrested November 16 on the sixth anniversary of the murders of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter by Salvadoran troops. Of the 31 officers cited by a UN Truth Commission for the massacre and its coverup, 22 were graduates of the school.

The Truth Commission also cited ten graduates for overseeing the massacre of 900 unarmed men, women and children in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote. And it identified a deceased graduate, Roberto d'Aubuisson, as the Salvadoran death-squad head who ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.

Just as the legal battle was not confined to the charge for which Bourgeois and his co-defendants were on trial, neither was the drama limited to the courtroom. Excerpts from a documentary film in which Latin American soldiers say the School of the America as taught them torture techniques were banned as evidence but shown during a noon news conference with Joseph Kennedy (D., Mass. . The 1995 documentary on the training center, School of assassins, was nominated for an Academy Award. Kennedy said that if the graduate were willing to testify, he would consider requesting a congressional inquiry. The school steadfastly has denied ever teaching torture.

The guilty verdict was not a surprise. In a pretrial stipulation Bourgeois and his co-defendants admitted trespassing at Fort Benning as part of a campaign. of protest against the school. The trespass charge stems from a regulation forbidding partisan political activity on the base.

The Pentagon has defended the School of the Americas as a promoter of human rights and democracy and a vital instrument of U.S. foreign policy. The defendants painted it as a symbol of U.S. complicity in the repression of Latin American peasants and antigovernment reformers, especially clergy. 6The 50-year-old academy, based at Fort Benning since 1984 after being moved from the Canal Zone in Panama, has graduated ten dictators and hundreds of officers implicated in atrocities. Alumni include the key organizers of Honduras's Battalion 3-16 death squad, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and General Hugo Banzer, who led a coup in Bolivia and later sheltered Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The school caused a stir in the late 1980s when it enrolled Banzer in its Hall of Fame and hung his portrait in its main hall.

In giving Banzer its highest honor, "the school shows just how committed it is to democracy," Bourgeois, a missionary tortured by Banzer's officers, has said. He has also asked rhetorically, "How can you take their commitment seriously when they invite war criminals to speak at their graduations?"--a reference to Guatemalan General Hector Grampio, guest speaker at the school's 1991 commencement. Six months before he spoke at that event, Gramajo was sued in a U.S. court for war crimes against several Guatemalans and Ursuline nun Dianna Ortiz, who was raped and tortured. In 1995 he was found liable by default. Ortiz is now staging a silent vigil and hunger strike near the White House to pressure the U.S. government to release documents relating to her case.

The two women among the defendants were first sentenced to probation, while the men, other than Bourgeois, got sentences ranging from two to four months. When the women told judge Robert Elliott they would prefer the same fate as the men, he complied, sentencing each to two months. Elliott has sentenced Bourgeois twice before to maximum sentences for demonstrations at the base. "One day this school, which has caused so much suffering in Latin America, mill be closed," said Bourgeois, who vowed to continue his campaign from prison.

Protestant and Jewish leaders back veto

More than two dozen top Protestant and Jewish leaders voiced their support April 30 for President Clinton's veto of legislation banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure. We fully support the president's action in standing with women and their families who face tragic, untenable pregnancies," the religious leaders said in an open letter to members of Congress.

The statement was the latest response in an intense clash between opponents and supporters of legal abortion that has flared since Congress passed, and Clinton vetoed, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The bill would outlaw intact dilation and extraction, a late-term abortion procedure generally used in situations in which the life of the mother is threatened or the fetus is badly deformed and not expected to live.