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Protesters Call Again for Closing of School of the Americas
By Elliott Minor
The Associated Press
Friday 18 November 2005
Columbus, Ga. - Carlos Mauricio, a torture survivor from El Salvador, will be among the thousands who gather at Fort Benning's main gate this weekend to call for the closing of a military school they blame for human rights abuses in Latin America.
"I was blindfolded. I was badly, badly beaten," he said. "I was tortured for nine days. I was forced to listen to the screaming of all the people being given electroshock and women being raped."
Mauricio, a high school science teacher, traveled by minivan from his home in San Francisco to join the annual protest organized by School of the Americas Watch, a group that has waged a 15-year campaign to close Fort Benning's School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
The demonstrations are held each November to mark the Nov. 16, 1989, slayings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador. A congressional task force found that some of the soldiers responsible for the massacre had been trained at the School of Americas, which moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984.
Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, founded the group in 1990 in an attempt to come to grips with the violence he had witnessed as a Naval officer in Vietnam and especially as a priest working with the poor in Bolivia in the 1980s.
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By Elliott Minor
The Associated Press
Friday 18 November 2005
Columbus, Ga. - Carlos Mauricio, a torture survivor from El Salvador, will be among the thousands who gather at Fort Benning's main gate this weekend to call for the closing of a military school they blame for human rights abuses in Latin America.
"I was blindfolded. I was badly, badly beaten," he said. "I was tortured for nine days. I was forced to listen to the screaming of all the people being given electroshock and women being raped."
Mauricio, a high school science teacher, traveled by minivan from his home in San Francisco to join the annual protest organized by School of the Americas Watch, a group that has waged a 15-year campaign to close Fort Benning's School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
The demonstrations are held each November to mark the Nov. 16, 1989, slayings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador. A congressional task force found that some of the soldiers responsible for the massacre had been trained at the School of Americas, which moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984.
Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, founded the group in 1990 in an attempt to come to grips with the violence he had witnessed as a Naval officer in Vietnam and especially as a priest working with the poor in Bolivia in the 1980s.
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Nun Jailed Over Protest Says She Has No Regrets
Peter Smith, Louisville Courier-Journal
Sister Lil Mattingly, a Louisville native and Roman Catholic nun, says she has no regrets about taking part in a protest at a military school last year, even though it landed her in federal prison for six months.
Sister Lil Mattingly plans to return to the annual protest next month at the military school, though she doesn't plan to trespass again.
Mattingly was set free in September after serving her time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn.
Mattingly -- who grew up in Louisville and worked in a Hispanic ministry in Shelbyville, Ky., in the late 1990s -- was arrested last November while protesting at Fort Benning, Ga.
She was taking part in an annual protest against a school that trains Latin American officers. The protesters allege the school trains the officers in torture and other techniques that violate human rights. The school denies the allegations.
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Peter Smith, Louisville Courier-Journal
Sister Lil Mattingly, a Louisville native and Roman Catholic nun, says she has no regrets about taking part in a protest at a military school last year, even though it landed her in federal prison for six months.
Sister Lil Mattingly plans to return to the annual protest next month at the military school, though she doesn't plan to trespass again.
Mattingly was set free in September after serving her time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn.
Mattingly -- who grew up in Louisville and worked in a Hispanic ministry in Shelbyville, Ky., in the late 1990s -- was arrested last November while protesting at Fort Benning, Ga.
She was taking part in an annual protest against a school that trains Latin American officers. The protesters allege the school trains the officers in torture and other techniques that violate human rights. The school denies the allegations.
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