Please join us to hear

Father Roy Bourgeois

who will speak at two events on

Wednesday 7 October 2009, both at

First Christian Church
740 E Speedway Boulevard
Tucson, AZ 85719-4499
520.624.8695
See Map here

Noon
Grassroots Organizing
for Justice in Latin America
Sponsored by Southwest Witness Against Torture
Bring a brown bag lunch.  Drinks will be available.

“It would be difficult for us, with our training,
to have a relationship with a leftist government.
That’s impossible.”

SOA trained Honduran Army Col Herberth Inestroza, justifying the June 28, 2009 coup
which ousted democratically elected President José Manuel Zelaya.

7pm
Break the Silence:
Shatter the Stained Glass Ceiling of Women’s Ordination
Sponsored by Call To Action, Women’s Ordination Conference and Call To Action-Tucson
For more information on this event, contact:
Laurie Olson at 520.615.0183 or call_to_action_tucson@yahoo.com

“Sexism, like racism, is a sin.
And no matter how hard or how long
we may try to justify discrimination,
in the end it is always immoral.”

Roy Bourgeois, MM is a Vietnam Vet, a Purple Heart recipient, a Roman Catholic priest of the Maryknoll Missionary Order and a tireless activist.  After ordination he went to work with the poor of Bolivia for several years.  Later he became an outspoken critic of the US government- funded combat training of Latin American militaries at the School of the Americas (SOA) and is best known as the founder and leader since 1990 of SOA Watch.

SOA Watch, among other things, conducts an annual protest at Ft Benning, GA which attracts thousands of nonviolent demonstrators each year.  He has spent four years in prison for his nonviolent protests.

In late 2008, the Vatican threatened this prophetic priest with excommunication unless he recanted his position that “excluding women from the priesthood is a grave injustice in our church.”  Father Roy has refused to recant but there has been no further response from the Vatican.

The suggested offering is $10.00 per person per event.

Please support the work of Father Bourgeois, Southwest Witness, Call To Action and Women’s Ordination Conference by downloading (right click, “save as”), printing and distributing the event flyers.  They are provided in Adobe PDF format and can be printed as 2 individual flyers or one 2 sided flyer.

Nadja Dizdarevic, wife of a detainee ordered released last week from Guantanamo Bay prison. (Photo: Reuters)

Washington – Barack Obama should act from the moment of his inauguration to restore a U.S. image battered by allegations of torturing terrorism suspects, said a group of retired military leaders planning to press their case with the president-elect’s transition team on Wednesday.

“We need to remove the stain, and the stain is on us, as well as on our reputation overseas,” said retired Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, former Navy inspector general.

Gunn and about a dozen other retired generals and admirals, who are scheduled to meet Obama’s team in Washington, said they plan to offer a list of anti-torture principles, including some that could be implemented immediately.

They include making the Army Field Manual the single standard for all U.S. interrogators. The manual requires humane treatment and forbids practices such as waterboarding – a form of simulated drowning widely condemned as torture.

Other immediate steps Obama could take are revoking presidential orders allowing the CIA to use harsh treatment, giving the International Red Cross access to all prisoners held by intelligence agencies and declaring a moratorium on taking prisoners to a third country for harsh interrogations.

“If he’d just put a couple of sentences in his inaugural address, stating the new position, then everything would flow from that,” said retired Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes, whose regiment in World War Two raised the American flag on Iwo Jima.

Obama has denounced waterboarding and other forms of harsh questioning allowed by secret orders.

“Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them,” he said in October 2007. He has also vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects, an international symbol of prisoner abuse.

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly denied condoning torture, but the denials have widely rung hollow among U.S. and international audiences. A Justice Department report this year found the White House ignored reports it received that FBI agents viewed some interrogations as “borderline torture.”

Obama, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s pick to be secretary of state, all met with the group of generals speaking out against torture during the Democratic presidential nomination race.

The group also has worked with Obama’s defeated opponent in the presidential race, Republican Sen. John McCain, in passing anti-torture legislation in the past, and he can continue to play a vital role, the officers said.

Some officers said they were comfortable with Obama’s decision to retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, former head of the U.S. Central Command, said he was confident Gates was willing to carry out Obama’s agenda. He said Gates had done well since succeeding Donald Rumsfeld, who was blamed for fostering prisoner abuse.

Editing by Mohammad Zargham.

A note from Southwest Weekend of Witness…
Articles on various sites are often deleted or relocated over time.
Click this link to download a PDF of the Truthout article.

An American interrogator is still haunted by what he saw in Iraq. (Photo: ZORIAH)

Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. He is the author of “How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.” He is writing under a pseudonym for security reasons.

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I’m still alarmed about that today.

I’m not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me – both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn’t work.Violence was at its peak during my five-month tour in Iraq. In February 2006, the month before I arrived, Zarqawi’s forces (members of Iraq’s Sunni minority) blew up the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq’s majority Shiites, and unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed. Reprisal killings became a daily occurrence, and suicide bombings were as common as car accidents. It felt as if the whole country was being blown to bits.

Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators’ bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules – and often break them. I don’t have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology – one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.

Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war’s biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi’s associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader’s location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

But Zarqawi’s death wasn’t enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.

I know the counter-argument well – that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that’s not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me – unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

After my return from Iraq, I began to write about my experiences because I felt obliged, as a military officer, not only to point out the broken wheel but to try to fix it. When I submitted the manuscript of my book about my Iraq experiences to the Defense Department for a standard review to ensure that it did not contain classified information, I got a nasty shock. Pentagon officials delayed the review past the first printing date and then redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material – including passages copied verbatim from the Army’s unclassified Field Manual on interrogations and material vibrantly displayed on the Army’s own Web site. I sued, first to get the review completed and later to appeal the redactions. Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; they don’t even want the public to hear them.

My experiences have landed me in the middle of another war – one even more important than the Iraq conflict. The war after the war is a fight about who we are as Americans. Murderers like Zarqawi can kill us, but they can’t force us to change who we are. We can only do that to ourselves. One day, when my grandkids sit on my knee and ask me about the war, I’ll say to them, “Which one?”

Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress – at considerable personal risk.

We’re told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations – and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror.

I’m actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We’re better than that. We’re smarter, too.

Denial is not a river in / Mon, 12/01/2008 – 19:18 — Anonymous (not verified)
Denial is not a river in Egypt, and the military is in it deep, I’m afraid. “Mr. Alexander” is a modern hero for his courage to stand up against “the machine” that churns out mindless sheeplike troops willing to serve the industrial war complex. I truly hope and pray the Obama administration does make good on its word to start ending torture, and listen to courageous and smart young men like this, who can guide us all to a more peaceful co-existence. If we just try listening to our enemies for once – see what’s driving and motivating them, rather than assuming, we could both learn a lot, and probably prevent tons of needless bloodshed. Thank you and God bless you “Mr. Alexander”, stay strong – we will try to help get out the word and promote this brilliantly simple notion – of listening to each other, vs shooting (or torturing first) and asking questions later. You are a true war hero to me.

THANKYOU! in time you, may / Mon, 12/01/2008 – 18:07 — Anonarcmous (not verified)
THANKYOU! in time you, may your pain recede with the knowledge of what you speak today advances the world. Mumbai’s tragedy shows how people are not just killed-as if that was not bad enough-but now routinely tortured:this routine acceptance of torture is Bush gift to the world:made it commonplace, and acceptable, everybody, including us does it,and lied–bringing us all down to his hellish standard.

As an Canadian with / Mon, 12/01/2008 – 17:04 — A.E. Cullin (not verified)
As an Canadian with relatives living in the United States, I think it will take decades for America to repair her international reputation – not only in the middle east, but world wide.

Mr. “Alexander’s” work is / Mon, 12/01/2008 – 15:54 — Scott Lankford (not verified)
Mr. “Alexander’s” work is truly courageous –a and clearly crucial to an honest debate about how to move beyond the mindless excesses of the Bush years. Yet it’s ominous that he still has to publish his opinions under a pseudonym. Is this our America? Truthout addicts — me included– should do everything we can to get the word out about this book. Given Mr. “Alexander’s” credentials, it could truly help to change the conversation in the coming years. We’ll all be safer for it.

Genital electrocution, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sensory confusion and starvation are a few elements of the curriculum of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in Fort Benning, Ga.

On the weekend of Nov. 15 and 16, hundreds of activists from across the country, including about a dozen from NAU, met in Tucson and Sierra Vista to protest U.S. torture policies. This event, the culmination of the “Southwest Week of Witness,” focused primarily upon WHINSEC and Ft. Huachuca, a Sierra Vista military base linked to the teaching of torture techniques.

“A lot of the people that were involved in Abu Ghraib, as well as at Guantanamo…actually were from — and I believe one of the women still works at — the interrogation school at Ft. Huachuca,” said Russell Crawford, a senior political science major and president of Peace and Justice at NAU.

WHINSEC, a United States Department of Defense facility formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA), has taught “military tactics and interrogation techniques” to over 61,000 military personnel, mostly Latinos, since its inception in 1946 in Panama.

The SOA changed its location in 1984 and was technically closed in 2001, the year WHINSEC was established.

“It’s the exact same thing, they just changed the name,” Crawford said. “They’re still using the same policy books and manuals — it’s even in the same building.”

Defenders of the institute point out, according to WHINSEC’s mission, “Eight hours of democracy and human rights instruction is mandatory.”

However, critics argue that those teaching these subjects at WHINSEC are not the most appropriate teachers, that the army is not a very democratic institution, and does not have the best credentials in regard to human rights.

“Graduates of the school and even instructors at the school have become some of the worst human rights violators in the western hemisphere,” said Reverend Kenneth Kennon, a general coordinator of the demonstrations.

Through educating the public via films and newsletters, petitioning congressmen and other means, the organizers of the Southwest Week of Witness aimed to raise awareness of the SOA, and thus to come closer to establishing civilian oversight of United States torture policies.

“The overall goal of the movement is to create more transparency in the policies the U.S. uses and to condemn the torture used in interrogation techniques,” Crawford said.

Peace and Justice organized several events around NAU from Nov. 4 to 14, including a letter writing campaign, an anti-torture candlelight vigil and procession on Flagstaff City Hall’s lawn and a forum given by Roddy Brett, assistant professor of politics and international affairs.

On Nov. 14 at Cline Library Auditorium, as well as on Nov. 15 at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Hector Aristizabal, a torture survivor from Medellin, Colombia gave his dramatic performance, Nightwind, in which he recreates the scenario in which he was tortured, and recounts his discovery of his brother’s death at the hands of those who tortured him. After these performances, Aristizabal led largely non-verbal workshops, which he said are aimed to empower those present to take action against torture rather than merely retreating into denial.

“It’s to hopefully work with people in the idea that we all need to heal, not just the torture survivors, but the torturers and the whole society that allows it…because torture dehumanizes us all,” Aristizabal said in regard to Nightwind. “We need communal healing, not just protests.”

The NAU students, mostly Peace and Justice members, arrived at Pima Community College in Tucson on the afternoon of Nov. 15, along with several other activists, where nine discussion-based workshops were held on issues related to torture and war. Some of these discussions were titled, “Counter-recruitment,” “Farms not Arms,” “100 days to shut down Gitmo” and “Why do people torture?”

From there, the activists proceeded to Southside Presbyterian Church to make signs, eat dinner and participate in the “Theater of Oppressed,” a series of poetry readings and musical performances followed by Aristizabal’s Nightwind.

Then, the activists began a procession to the federal building where they lit candles with the names of those who suffered torture at the hands of those trained by the SOA, at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay. These candles were laid on top of butterflies drawn by the children of families affected by torture.

The next day, activists drove to Veteran’s Memorial Park in Sierra Vista, where they listened to speakers and music until the early afternoon.

One of these speakers, Frankie Flores, a man from El Salvador, was tortured in 1980 by the National Guard, who accused him of working with the guerillas, when, in reality, he was working with the Catholic Church.

“I believe when we raise our voices against torture, people learn more and they take a position,” Flores said.

However, in addition to speakers and musicians supporting the movement, the event was attended by counterdemonstrators. Members of the American Legion Riders and Patriot Guard, a group of military veterans and troops, circled the parking lot driving motorcycles waving large American flags.

“There are a lot of people out there protesting American soldiers and America, and we are just trying to let people know there still are patriots out there,” said James Goodman, a member of the American Legion Riders.

Many of the activists, however, emphasized that they were targeting United States policies, not troops.

“The soldiers…are not the ones we’re targeting,” Kennon said. “In fact, since they are defending the American laws, and torture is against the law, they should be on our side.”

Nonetheless, given that 10,850 people, approximately 37 percent of the workforce, from Sierra Vista are employed at Ft. Huachuca, the protesters met much hostility as their procession approached the fort’s gates.

The protesters, many of whom wore orange jumpsuits with black hoods over their heads to resemble tortured detainees, marched through a stream of counter-demonstrators waving American flags, signs with slogans such as “Gitmo rocks” and “Bin Laden loves lefties” and blaring Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.”

The protestors decided not to speak with the counter-demonstrators to avoid confrontation and keep the attention on their demonstration.

This did not stop counter-demonstrators from saying, “Osama bin Laden loves you!” to the passing demonstrators.

The protesters marched past this demonstration and stood along Buffalo Soldier Trail, facing Ft. Huachuca, where they sang and danced to songs such as “This Little Light of Mine,” and held signs with slogans like “Torture is Terror.”

Next weekend, similar protests will be held at Ft. Benning.

A note from SWW…

You can read the article on the NAU Lumberjack/Jack Central website however articles are often moved or deleted over time. To download a PDF of the article with comments to this date, click here.

Group plans protest today outside fort, in SV park
By Bill Hess
Herald/Review
Sunday 16 November 2008

SIERRA VISTA — A retired Tucson minister says a civilian human rights commission is needed to oversee interrogation training on Fort Huachuca.

The Army says its training follows the law and the guidelines set forth in the Army Field Manual.

Today, a number of people are expected to “engage in a peaceful, non-violent protest in Sierra Vista and outside the gates of the Army post.”

This will be the fifth year for the “A No to Torture Rally.” People from 15 states are expected to be at this year’s protest.

The retired minister, Ken Kennon, said the event is an avenue to ask those in charge of training on the fort “to simply follow the law.”

The consortium involved in the protest also are seeking a congressional investigation and hearings on how soldiers are trained to become interrogators.

Since the rallies began in 2004, there have been counterprotesters who have challenged the accusation that courses at the Intelligence Center teaches methods of torture as part of the human intelligence collector course.

Fort spokeswoman Tanja Linton said the accusation of teaching methods of torture is not correct.

“The U.S. Army Intelligence Center trains Department of Defense human intelligence collectors in accordance with Army Field Manual 2-22.3,” she said.

That training is “consistent with the applicable laws and policies to include Senator (John) McCain’s amendment and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005,” Linton said.

In 2004 and 2005, 50 protesters each year were countered by 20 each year with no one being arrested for attempting to get on the post. The fort’s Main Gate was closed to traffic most of the years during the protests, as it will be this year.

The atmosphere was fairly peaceful on both sides in 2004 and 2005, but in 2006 heightened emotions began to show as the number of protesters reached about 100 and those countering them was about 50. That year, two Roman Catholic priests were arrested for attempting to enter the fort.

Last year, the number of protesters reached 300 and those against them increased to more than 100, There were individual and group screaming matches with threats thrown back and forth as Sierra Vista police officers kept a line of demarcation between the two groups.

Last year fort officials invited three people who were planning to protest to meet with the commander of the battalion that trains human intelligence collectors, formerly called interrogators, and some of his staff a couple of days before the rally. The two sides met, agreeing to disagree about the issue.

Two days later, two of the three protesters who sat down for more than an hour with the fort officials were arrested, along with another person, who attempted to illegally enter the fort during the rally.

Kennon said he and others were not impressed by what the post attempted to do to tell their side of the story.

“We are used to dog-and-pony shows,” he said, noting such briefings are useless.

Kennon said he doesn’t know if anyone this year will attempt to enter the post in an “attempt to talk to commanders and soldiers about our concerns,” noting that decision will be made by each individual.

Unlike the previous rallies across the street from the fort’s main entrance where the protesters used an empty lot to gather in, that will not happen this year, the organizer said.

Instead, the event will start at 10 a.m. at Veterans’ Memorial Park in Sierra Vista.

One of the speakers at the park will be the Rev. Louie Vitale, who was arrested for trespassing on the fort in 2006 and was eventually sentenced to five months in federal prison, which was one of his several stints in confinement for anti-military protests over the years.

During his trail in federal court in Tucson, Vitale and co-defendant the Rev. Steve Kelly tried to turn the case into a trial on torture training, but the judge refused their efforts.

Army Reserve Col. Ann Wright, who is a retired U.S. State Department official, also is scheduled to speak. She, too, has been arrested a number of times for her anti-war stances, primarily involving the U.S. actions in Iraq.

After the rally at the park, the protesters plan to walk slightly more than two miles from the park to the corner of Fry Boulevard and Buffalo Soldier Trail, where the fort’s Main Gate is located.

Kennon said some protesters are expected to gather outside federal contractor offices in Sierra Vista, contending those businesses provide instructors to the fort and are part of the problem.

Kennon said the fort’s past association with the former School of the Americas in providing manuals to train Latin American military on how to use torture means the Intelligence Center has a history of teaching such unsavory practices and that, along with what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where Iraqi detainees were harassed, are the reasons for protesting the fort.

The Schools of the Americas no longer exists. It was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Kennon said a change in name doesn’t mean a change in what is taught at Fort Benning, Ga. There has been an annual protest outside that fort for many years, and it takes place next week.

Emphasizing the protest group wants to keep the event peaceful, Kennon said there will be trained peacekeepers from his organization wearing orange vests who will work to keep things nonviolent, and they will work with the Sierra Vista police.

The group is expected to leave the park around 1:30 p.m. and to be outside the fort about an hour later for “our vigil,” he said.

Linton said everyone on Fort Huachuca have taken an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.

“We fully respect the right of Americans to express different opinions under the First Amendment,” she said.

Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 17, 2008
Contact in Tucson: Jack or Felice Cohen-Joppa / 520.323.8697

THREE BARRED FROM FT. HUACHUCA AS 200 RALLY AGAINST TORTURE AND CRUEL TREATMENT OF “TERROR WAR” PRISONERS

More than 200 people rallied against torture on Sunday, November 16, at Veterans Memorial Park in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The group then processed two miles through the city to the main gate of Ft. Huachuca, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center where interrogators are trained.

Soon after the procession arrived opposite the entrance to the Fort, three people crossed the street and entered the base to deliver messages to base Commander Major General John Custer and his soldiers, opposing the cruel treatment and abuse of detainees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sr. Megan Rice, 78, from Las Vegas, Nevada; Fr. Louie Vitale, 76, from Oakland, California; and Dennis Duvall, 66, from Prescott, Arizona, were quickly stopped and taken into custody. They were released within the hour with a formal letter barring them from entering the base for one year. A base spokeswoman told reporters, “We’re trying to keep this as low key as possible.”

Franciscan Fr. Vitale, a former provincial of the order’s Santa Barbara province, was arrested during a similar protest at the Fort in 2006. Together with co-defendant Fr. Steve Kelly, he had served a five month prison sentence for trespass and failure to obey an officer.

Two of three people arrested at the Fort in November, 2007, returned to join this year’s demonstration. Fr. Jerry Zawada and Betsy Lamb had both served two months in prison awaiting trial.

Speakers at the rally included torture survivor and Colombian refugee Hector Aristizabal and retired U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright.

The procession was led by musicians Francisco Herrera, Jose Serrano, Ted Warmbrand, Chet Gardiner and Terry Pawlowski, along with people carrying large, colorful butterfly puppets. The puppets represented transformation from a nation that sanctions cruelty and torture to a world that embraces hope for humanity.

The demonstration concluded with a stop at the nearby office of CACI, a private military contractor implicated in the abuse of Iraqi detainees, and currently contracted to write manuals and teach interrogation.

Sunday’s rally and procession capped a weekend of events that began in Tucson. Event coordinator Rev. Ken Kennon noted that the “Southwest Witness to Stop Torture is a regional action in solidarity with the campaign to close the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the testimony of torture survivors has informed us and moved us to action.”

Thousands of people will gather at Ft. Benning this coming weekend, November 21-23, for the annual vigil to close the School of the Americas. Human rights abuses in Latin America, including torture and murder, have been carried out by graduates of the school. The torture manual which was used at the School of the Americas came from Ft. Huachuca.

A statement written for the Ft. Huachuca demonstration follows this press release.

For more information see

• http://tortureontrial.org
• http://southwestwitness.org
• http://soaw.org

Why We Protest at Ft Huachuca
A Statement of Southwest Witness Against Torture / October 2008

Gandhi teaches us that nonviolence needs to be practiced in places of institutionalized violence.
We practice nonviolence at Ft. Huachuca – headquarters of U.S. Army military intelligence training – to protest the policy of cruelty our country has carried out against captives in the so-called “War on Terror.”

We practice nonviolence at Ft. Huachuca to open dialogue with soldiers and commanders about their rights and obligations to report cases of torture and cruel treatment. We call on enlisted personnel to speak publicly about their training and any abuses they have observed.

We practice nonviolence at Ft. Huachuca to protest our government’s increasing use of private contractors – with little to no oversight or accountability – both as instructors and as part of interrogation teams in the field.

We practice nonviolence at Ft. Huachuca to call for civilian, human-rights centered oversight of all interrogation training and practice, which must include absolute prohibition of cruel treatment and command responsibility for any violation of this prohibition.

Our nonviolent presence joins growing, deepening movements throughout the world calling for an end to war and torture everywhere. We act in solidarity with the campaign to close the School of the Americas/Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where the testimony of torture survivors has informed our outrage and moved us to action. We know that torture diminishes the humanity of both perpetrator and those who are tortured. It damages the very soul of our country.

We are told that basic training in military interrogation at Ft. Huachuca respects the Geneva Conventions and follows the U.S. Army Field Manual. Yet, despite the efforts of many honorable soldiers and commanders who respect human rights, this training has been inadequate to prevent abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and other military prisons and secret detention centers around the world.

What is being taught in the field and in advanced courses about interrogation? What is happening in this dark space between training and the field? Has the policy of cruelty practiced by some U.S. military, CIA, FBI, and private agencies been integrated into military doctrine and advanced training? Does such activity take place at Ft. Huachuca?

We understand that secrecy and deception are part of the nature of military intelligence. We challenge this institutionalized silence, because torture and cruelty betray not only the Constitution of the United States, but who we are as a people. In a democratic society, such silence must not prevail.

To break this silence, interrogators and all other personnel (including private contractors) must be taught when and how to resist illegal orders that violate the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. They must be taught their obligation to speak out against such orders, and to report abuses to their superiors. And they must receive guarantees that speaking out will not lead to retaliation or punishment.

Ft. Huachuca’s role in past military involvement in torture training must also be brought to light. Such involvement includes the creation of notorious manuals used at the School of the Americas to teach Latin American military personnel how to torture. Undoubtedly, records about past and contemporary use of torture exist at Ft. Huachuca. We call for the release of all such information, both past and present.

It is time for a light to shine on the darkness that has been hidden behind the walls of Ft. Huachuca.

Monsignor Oscar Romero of El Salvador said, “Love begins where violence ends.” To end the violence of torture and war we will stand at the gates of Ft. Huachuca. Together let’s build a world without torture.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 13, 2008
Contact in Tucson: Rev. Kenneth Kennon, 520.745.5803

HUNDREDS EXPECTED FOR TORTURE PROTEST AT FORT HUACHUCA and DEMAND CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT OF INTERROGATION PRACTICES

Hundreds will gather for the largest annual Southwest Witness To Stop Torture on November 15-16 in Tucson and Sierra Vista, AZ. Citizens from at least fifteen states are expected.

Southwest Witness will engage in peaceful nonviolent action at Fort Huachuca on Sunday afternoon, November 16.

“We gather at Fort Huachuca to protest the practice of cruelty our country has carried out against captives in the so-called “War on Terror,” said Rev. Kenneth Kennon, a coordinator of the weekend. “We seek to open dialogue with soldiers and commanders about their rights and obligations to report cases of torture and cruel treatment. We also challenge our government’s increasing use of private contractors, with little or no oversight, both as instructors and as part of interrogation teams in the field and we call for independent civilian human-rights commission oversight of all United States interrogation training and practice.”

A No to Torture Rally at Veterans Memorial Park in Sierra Vista beginning at 10 a.m. on November 16, will be followed in the early afternoon by a peaceful march and vigil to the main gate of Fort Huachuca and a nearby office of a corporate contractor. Speakers will include torture survivors and U.S. military veterans.

“Southwest Witness to Stop Torture is a regional action in solidarity with the campaign to close the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Georgia,” explained Rev. Kennon, “where the testimony of torture survivors has informed us and moved us to action.”

The weekend witness has scheduled events in Tucson and Sierra Vista, AZ.

Friday 14 November / 7pm – Tucson
Book reading and signing of Dissent: Voices of Conscience
Colonel Ann Wright, US Army ret
Antigone Books
411 N 4th Avenue / Tucson

Saturday 15 November / 10am-3:30pm – Tucson
Plan of Action: How can we stop torture?
Amethyst Room
Pima Community College
Downtown Campus Center / Tucson

4-6:30pm
Sign-making and Community-building
Southside Presbyterian Church
317 West 23rd Street / Tucson

7pm
Theater of the Oppressed
Poetry by Owl & Panther, Music by Francisco Herrera, and Drama/Workshop by Hector Aristizabal
Southside Presbyterian Church Kiva

9pm
No to Torture Candlelight Procession
from Southside Presbyterian Church to the Tucson Federal Building followed by a vigil.

Sunday 16 November / 10am – Sierra Vista
No to Torture Rally
Veterans Memorial Park
3105 East Fry Blvd / Sierra Vista

1:30-3:30pm
No to Torture Procession & Vigil
Main gate of Fort Huachuca
Buffalo Soldiers Trail & Fry Blvd / Sierra Vista

7:30pm – Tucson
Francisco Herrera in Concert
Calvin Hall at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church
3809 E 3rd Street / Tucson

Details for all these related events can be found at southwestwitness.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 10, 2008
Contact in Tucson: Rev. Kenneth Kennon, 520.745.5803

HUNDREDS EXPECTED FOR TORTURE PROTEST AT FORT HUACHUCA

United States citizens from at least fifteen states, including all the Southwestern States, are expected to gather for the largest annual Southwest Witness To Stop Torture on November 15-16 in Tucson and Sierra Vista, AZ.

Southwest Witness will engage in peaceful nonviolent action at Fort Huachuca.

• To protest the practice of cruelty our country has carried out against captives in the so-called “War on Terror.”
• To open dialogue with soldiers and commanders about their rights and obligations to report cases of torture and cruel treatment.
• To challenge our government’s increasing use of private contractors, with little or no oversight, both as instructors and as part of interrogation teams in the field.
• To call for independent civilian human-rights commission oversight of all United States interrogation training and practice.

A No to Torture Rally at Veterans Memorial Park in Sierra Vista beginning at 10 a.m. on November 16, will be followed in the early afternoon by a peaceful march and vigil to the main gate of Fort Huachuca and a nearby office of a corporate contractor. Speakers will include torture survivors and U.S. military veterans.

The weekend witness begins the day before in Tucson with participants discussing “How can we stop torture?” and building a plan of action; a Theater of the Oppressed evening of poetry, music and drama; followed by a No to Torture Candlelight Procession and Vigil to the Tucson Federal Building.

Additional related events include a Friday evening book reading from Dissent: Voices of Conscience by author Colonel Ann Wright, US Army ret., at a Tucson bookstore and a Sunday evening concert by Francisco Herrera, a peace and justice movement legend in the Bay Area.

Details of time and place for these related events can be found at southwestwitness.org.

Southwest Witness to Stop Torture is a regional action in solidarity with the campaign to close the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, GA, where the testimony of torture survivors has informed us and moved us to action.

More information at southwestwitness.org.

Southwest Witness to Stop Torture Rally and Vigil

Sunday
November 16
10am – 1:30pm
Veterans Memorial Park
3105 E. Fry Blvd / Sierra Vista, AZ
Between Mormon Dr. and the Highway 90 bypass
Click here for map to Rally

Will a new administration end torture and institute policies based on Social Justice and Human Rights? Only if we keep a clear vision and continue to demand it. Join us to keep this issue in the forefront of public debate and end this disgraceful practice.

For more information – visit, write or call

• southwestwitness.org
• tortureontrial.org
• southwestwitness@gmail.com
• 520.745.5803

Please Note… Selling items is NOT permitted by the City of Sierra Vista. Each group is responsible for their own table and materials. A park area near the bandshell will be designated for tables.

Francisco Herrera has been a singing organizer in the Bay Area for years. From his work with the Freedom Song Network, Grupo Muy Muy, to his fine-tuned musical emceeing for the large annual SOA Watch Annual Vigil & Action at Fort Benning, he is fully engaged and engaging.

More info on the schedule page.