SOA Watch renews the demand that Rios Montt US collaborators/backers be brought to justice

[Catherina]

Efraín Ríos Montt Found Guilty of Genocide!
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards Justice.
Written by Dominique Diaddigo
Saturday, 11 May 2013 18:26


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SOA Watch renews the demand that justice also visit those who trained, equipped, and facilitated his genocidal regime. School of the Americas graduates formed the backbone of the presidential cabinets under the dictatorships of both Montt and his predecessor, Romeo Lucas García. They were also deeply involved in the Guatemalan Intelligence Agency (D-2), in the formation of the notorious civil defense patrols, and in planning and executing "Operation Sofia". This military maneuver wiped out some 600 Mayan villages, part of a broader campaign "of genocide against groups of Mayan people," as concluded by the 1999 UN-backed truth commission. Montt is the first ex-president to be found guilty of genocide by a Latin American court---it indicates that the tide is turning against impunity in the region, however, we must also hold those in the United States accountable, who trained and equipped the right-wing military dictatorships and made the genocide possible.

After a meeting with Ríos Montt in Honduras during the US-backed Dirty Wars in Central America, then-president Ronald Reagan stated that Ríos Montt was “a man of great personal integrity . . . totally dedicated to democracy”. The next day, December 6, 1982, the Kaibiles, the Guatemalan special forces which have extensive ties to the SOA, entered the village of Las Dos Erres, systematically raped the women, and killed 162 inhabitants, 67 of them children. Current President of Guatemala Otto Peréz Molina, also a graduate of the SOA, spent much of his time in military service as a member of the Kaibiles. This military unit was developed by the Guatemalan government in 1974, and its initial leader was a fellow SOA graduate by the name Pablo Nuila Hub. Also during the military career of Molina, he served as Montt's Ixil field commander, under the alias Major Tito Arias. For a more detailed SOA Watch report about the Kaibiles, click here.It was the current administration of Peréz Molina who, fearing Molina's complicity in much of the evidence brought forth in the trial against Montt, who stood to benefit from the temporary suspension of the trial. Thankfully justice prevailed and the trial resumed.


But since today represents a new dawn for the Ixil, Guatemalans and other survivors of systematic violence, we celebrate with hope in our hearts and a renewed sense of purpose. SOA Watch continues to call for the closure of the School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) and for an investigation into the connections between U.S. military training and human rights abuses in Latin America. We will continue fighting in the streets, as well as our judicial and legislative branches until we also see justice for the victims of the SOA. Please contact your Member of Congress to urge them to close down the SOA: Click here.

As a commemoration to the inevitability of justice coming to light, we also point to our recent victory in the courtrooms of the United States, in which a federal judge from California has ordered that the State Department grant an SOA Watch request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demanding the release of the names of graduates and instructors from the SOA/WHINSEC, which we have previously been denied. Read more about the victory here.

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http://soaw.org/index.php

[Catherina]

1. We sent no advisors, we sent "English teachers"

http://books.google.com.gt/books?id=djlnQiumJ18C&pg=PA276#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Peace Patriot]

2. Gawd.

June 2009:

One of the coup generals in Honduras said that their coup was intended "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile)

Now the murders are escalating in Honduras--murders of labor leaders, teachers, peasant farmers, political leftists, journalists. Where will it end?

The U.S.-ification of Latin American countries almost ALWAYS means mass murder--by U.S. funded/trained local fascist thugs or by the DEA (Honduras 2012), or by U.S. military 'contractors' (as I believe occurred in Colombia during the Bush Junta), or by design of the USAID ("pacification" programs for Colombia, where a mass murder occurred--La Macarena)--cuz you can't subjugate, rob and tyrannize Latin Americans without killing a lot of them, especially the community leaders.

It hasn't stopped. It is an ON-GOING policy of the U.S. government, no matter who is in charge (or thinks they are in charge).

And "communism" is still the bugaboo! Read: universal free medical care, universal free education through college, decent food on the table, decent wages and benefits, pensions for all, strong labor unions, housing for the poor, upward mobility, political inclusiveness, high public participation and use of a country's resources to help the people who live there.

Ahem, read: the "New Deal." THAT is what the Honduran general meant by "communism." And THAT is what our transglobal corporate, bankster and war profiteer rulers are determined to prevent us from even knowing about, let alone demanding and enacting.

Ever since Reagan. That was the first junta here. A media junta. Now they have ES&S/Diebold on top of everything else to guarantee their tyrannical rule.

[Catherina]

3. I dream of the day the American people wake up and realize we're too broke to oppress Latin America

like this to protect and enrich the 1% and its collaborators. Since the morality of it all hasn't moved us to action, I hope the finances of it, as we lose our jobs, healthcare, homes etc..., will soon.

One day we'll really honor Dr Martin Luther King and realize we have no moral grounds for sending our own poor to fight in other lands to destroy rights we don't even have at home.

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For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

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what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

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http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[Judi Lynn]

6. Wasn't that thoughtful? Now they are sending GI's to the Americas

on "humanitarian" missions. Yes, indeedy. That's U.S. policy. Hyumanitarian, first and foremast!

Nairn has been researching a very long time. Thanks for this look.

[sabrina 1]

4. Better late than never. I wish it were possible to prosecute the collaborators here, but we do not

prosecute war criminals. It is shameful that the SOA still exists, or ever did for that matter.

Every successful prosecution somewhere, I hope sends a message to the war criminals everywhere, that some day, maybe even after they die, justice will eventually prevail and they will go down in history in shame. No matter how comfortable a life they are provided with here, Henry Kissenger eg, each time another genocidal maniac is finally convicted, it points at them too. I hope at least they feel some sense of fear that their precious 'legacies' will not be what they would want them to be.

[Judi Lynn]

5. The ones who sent him are guilty, too. They are still the same,

they are still doing the same things in the world against the powerless.

They are not going to win, in the end, the whole world knows it.

"The meek shall inherit the earth." Not the corporations, not the politicians the corporatitons buy, not the high offices they aspire to after the corporations put them in orbit.

It's time for the deeply protected death machines to seek a higher calling. After all, they can never get any lower, which we all knew so long ago. No one is lower than one who seeks to harm other people.

[sabrina 1]

8. Yes, I know, but why do you think they did it?

There must be pressure they are feeling to get some justice, and maybe in their idiocy they think that by pointing fingers somewhere else, they will not be noticed? They are apparently turning on each other it seems.