Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

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Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
- WHINSEC -

WHINSEC-Seal.png


WHINSEC emblem
Lineup 1946
Country United States of America
Armed forces United States Armed Forces
Armed forces United States Army
Branch of service army
Type Army School
Strength 215
Insinuation United States Department of Defense
Location Columbus (Georgia)
Former locations Panama Canal Zone
motto Libertad, Paz y Fraternidad (Freedom, Peace and Fraternity)
Web presence www.benning.army.mil
Commandant
Current
commander 		Col. Glenn R. Huber Jr.

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation , WHINSEC for short , 1946 to 2001 School of the Americas , SOA for short , originally Escuela de las Américas , is a US Army training camp at Fort Benning in Columbus (Georgia) , USA . The training camp and its predecessor institution, Escuela de las Américas , founded in 1946, were attended by more than 60,000 Latin American military personnel. Until 1984 it was in the Panama Canal Zone . The school is connected to the dirty wars of US-backed South American military dictatorships and the associated oppression of broad sections of the population , especially in the 1970s and 1980s.

history

The abandoned buildings of the Escuela de las Américas in the Panama Canal Zone

The School of the Americas was established in 1946 under the name Latin American Training Center - Ground Division in the extra-territorial canal zone of Panama . Their task was to consolidate US interests in Central and South America during the conflict over the Panama Canal through military training of Latin American soldiers and military advisers. During the Cold War , the focus shifted towards preventing the spread of communism in Latin America ( domino theory ). After the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 and under pressure from the Panamanian government, the location in the extraterritorial canal zone was given up in 1984 and relocated to Fort Benning. The training camp was incorporated into the Army Training and Doctrine Command , the Army's highest training and instruction command . The WHINSEC receives an annual budget of approximately ten million US dollars.

Under President Ronald Reagan, school operations were expanded from 1984 ( Reagan Doctrine ). In 2000, the previous School of the Americas was closed by decision of Congress. In January 2001, on the basis of a law signed by President Bill Clinton , WHINSEC was opened as the successor institution in its current form. Since then, human rights studies have also been part of the curriculum. A new body that was formed by law when WHINSEC was founded is the 14-member advisory committee called the Board of Visitors, which has since been entrusted with the independent review, observation and recommendations of the activities of the training facility. The committee, which includes representatives from Congress and the government as well as representatives from the areas of religion, human rights, science and business appointed by the Secretary of Defense, reviews, among other things, the content and forms of teaching and their compliance with law and statute as well as with the goals of the US -Politics.

An average of 1,500 students pass through the training facility every year.

Following Venezuela (2004), Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia also announced in 2006 that they would no longer send recruits to the training camp. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez canceled all cooperation with the training camp. In 2002 graduates of the training camp had put up against him.

criticism

The School of the Americas has been criticized by human rights organizations for training predominantly right-wing military and paramilitary groups in torture techniques and for its massive support for right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America. Many of the graduates were later instrumental in so-called dirty wars in their home countries.

The graduates include Latin American soldiers, officers and later junta generals such as Leopoldo Galtieri , Roberto Viola , the Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer Suárez , the Panamanian general, ex- CIA employee and drug dealer Manuel Noriega as well as the Peruvian secret service employee Vladimiro Montesinos , further Efraín Montt , Guillermo Rodríguez Lara and Omar Torrijos . Even Roberto D'Aubuisson , who commissioned the murder of Oscar Romero , archbishop of San Salvador , was formed in the SOA. Because many of the military who were involved in coup attempts against Latin American governments graduated from the training facility, it was also referred to as the "coup school". "Its graduates include most of the worst torturers in Latin America," said former CIA agent Philip Agee in 1999.

In 1996, results of an internal 1992 investigation by the Department of Defense were published that found intelligence manuals used by the School of the Americas between 1982 and 1991 to provide guidance on torture, executions, extortion, and other coercive methods to combat insurgents. At the same time, the Ministry of Defense stated that the teaching materials had been changed as a result of the investigation and that the courses had since contained mandatory information on human rights issues.

Also in the US Congress which was School of the Americas criticized. So said the MPs in the House of Representatives Joe Moakley ( Democratic Party / Massachusetts ), the leading critics in Congress at the end of the 1990s, the school had "some of the most brutal killers, some of the cruelest dictators and some of the worst violators of human rights" brought forth the the western world have ever seen. Another proponent of closing the SOA was MP Joseph Kennedy (Democratic Party / Massachusetts). Representative Jim McGovern (Democratic Party / Massachusetts) also campaigned for the closure of the newly opened WHINSEC in 2001 , who repeatedly introduced legislative initiatives to end the activities of the training center.

The American punk band Anti-Flag released a song called The School of Assassins in 2004 as part of the album Rock Against Bush .

Organization "School of the Americas Watch"

Since 1980, when sisters of his former order were murdered by soldiers in El Salvador , the former Catholic priest, human rights activist and Vietnam veteran Roy Bourgeois has focused on criticizing the training of Latin American military by the USA. He calls the School of the Americas, whose graduates include the commanders of the perpetrators of 1980, a “school of murderers”. In 1990 he founded the organization School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), which calls for the facility to be closed permanently, and has since organized demonstrations every November in front of the Fort Benning military camp , where the training camp is now located. In 2005, the year in which SOAW founder Bourgeois was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize for his commitment , 19,000 people are said to have taken part in the protest demonstration. In November 2013, around 1,750 participants came. The date of the demonstration (around November 16) commemorates the 1989 massacre in the Salvadoran Universidad Centroamericana .

background

In South America, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, almost all states were ruled for a long time by politically right-wing military dictatorships supported by the USA . Almost all of them used force to suppress the mostly left-wing opposition in so-called dirty wars . The US is partially accused of promoting massive human rights abuses through the School of the Americas and its involvement in Operation Condor and other activities .

Graduates

The school's best-known graduates include:

literature

  • Lesley Gill: The School of the Americas. Military training and Political violence in the Americas. Duke University Press, Durham NC / London 2004, ISBN 0-8223-3392-9 (study by an anthropologist)
  • James Hodge, Linda Cooper: Disturbing the Peace. The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas. Orbis Books, Maryknoll NY 2004, ISBN 1-57075-434-9 .
  • Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer: School of Assassins. The Case for Closing the School of the Americas and for Fundamentally Changing US Foreign Policy. 2nd printing. Orbis Books, Maryknoll NY 1997, ISBN 1-57075-134-X .

Audios

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ WHINSEC Board of Visitors. on the official website of WHINSEC, accessed on November 26, 2013 (English)
  2. ↑ FAQ on the official website of WHINSEC, accessed on November 26, 2013 (English)
  3. ↑ a b Dana Priest: US Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture. In: Washington Post, September 21, 1996, accessed from the SOAW website on November 26, 2013
  4. ^ Controversial 'School of the Americas' Closes. In: ABC News of December 15, 2000, accessed November 26, 2013
  5. ^ A b Christoph Schult: Military School Fort Benning: Terror training on behalf of the US government. Spiegel Online, November 5, 2001
  6. ^ Congressman McGovern's statements on limiting funding for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. ( Memento of December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) On the official Jim McGoverns website of July 23, 2007, accessed on November 26, 2013 (English)
  7. ^ Roy Bourgeois and Hanne Hiob were awarded the 2005 Aachen Peace Prize. ( Memento from September 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Message on the Aachen Peace Prize website, accessed on November 26, 2013
  8. ↑ Crowd of 1,750 calls for the closing institute at Fort Benning. In: Ledger-Enquirer of November 23, 2013, accessed on November 26, 2013 (English)
  9. ↑ Christopher Hitchens : The Case Against Henry Kissinger . In: Harper's Magazine . February 2001, p. 37 ( online [PDF]). online ( Memento from August 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ National Security Archive: Chile: 16,000 Secret Documents Declassified. CIA Forced to Release Hundreds of Records of Covert Operations , Nov. 13, 2000
  11. ^ Telegram from the US ambassador to Panama on the use of US facilities by Condor agents (PDF; 48 kB), October 20, 1978, source: George Washington University
  12. ^ [Christine Legrand: Emilio Massera. Le Monde, November 12, 2010, p. 23]
  13. ↑ Article in the Daily Telegraph (English)
  14. ↑ Article in the New York Times (English)
  15. ↑ Article in the Telegraph (English)
  16. ↑ "CIA Activities in Chile" , recorded in approved CIA documents, published by the National Security Archive on May 24, 2007
  17. ↑ Christopher Marquis: CIA Says Chilean General in '76 Bombing Was Informer , New York Times , September 19, 2000
  18. ↑ DER SPIEGEL Document of Horror , accessed on April 13, 2020
  19. ↑ a b The New York Times (English)
  20. ^ The New Strategy . In: Time Magazine. April 23, 1965
  21. ↑ Article Huffingtonpost ( Memento of February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  22. ↑ SOA degrees. (No longer available online.) SOA Watch, archived from the original on September 4, 2012 ; Retrieved August 12, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.soaw.org
  23. ↑ http://www.soaw.org/about-us/faq