CLOSE THE US TORTURE SCHOOLS!
Copyright 2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal, for SOAWatch
Greetings! and Ona Move ! to alla folks gathered at this convergence against torturers being trained at this 'School of Assassins' at Fort Benning, Georgia!
As fate would have it, I've just finished reading the remarkable book by former Colombian diplomat, Clara Nieto, who gives us the painful and shattering history of the US long campaign of torture by proxy throughout Central and Latin America. Her book, Masters of War (NY: Seven Stories, 2003) teaches us much about the costs of Empire on our neighbors to the South. For example, that this 'school' is but one of several where foreign soldiers, officers, and cops are trained in torture against their own people. There's the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; the Special Forces School at Fort Gulick; and the Inter-American Police Academy at Fort Davis, both in Panama. Tens of thousands of people were trained in the techniques of torture in such places, and the tortured, the raped, the slaughtered, can barely be reckoned since they were opened in the early '60s.
As we have all seen from the photos and videos of Abu Ghraib, Americans are quite adept in their own torture techniques, and we find that many of the most vile, depraved experts of that dark art, are prison guards, or cops in civilian life, and have used their brutal expertise in US prisons and police stations here in the US. Indeed, one of the most scandalous torturers and sexual sadists worked right here, as a guard in good standing, at SCI Greene, in western Pennsylvania!
We therefore learn, that when we oppose torture against others, we oppose it for ourselves; for the borders are closer than we think. Remember Abner Louima; remember Rodney King; remember Delbert Africa -- people beaten and brutalized before your eyes. Remember Archbishop Romero; the nuns raped and murdered in El Salvador -- your tax dollars at work! We must close the torture schools; the coup schools, the institutes for imperialism that threaten our peace and our futures! You, all of you, have forced them to change their name; it won't be long before you force their abolition! Onwards! Ona Move! Long Live John Africa!
© copyright 2004 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
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