As 25,000 people protested at the School of Assassins in Fort Benning, Georgia, 300 protested torture training at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona
November 18, 2007
By Jack or Felice Cohen-Joppa
Three Arrested as 300 Protest Torture at Ft. Huachuca
More than three hundred people rallied against torture today outside the gates of Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and school for interrogation.
Three people were arrested during the rally as they tried to enter the base and meet with enlisted personnel and officers to continue a dialogue begun three days earlier about the interrogation techniques taught there.
Betsy Lamb, Mary Burton Riseley, and Franciscan Fr. Jerry Zawada were taken into custody at the main gate about 1 p.m., and charged with criminal trespass on a military installation (18 USC1382), conspiracy (18 USC 371), and failure to comply with a police officer (Arizona Revised Statutes 28-622, as assimilated by the Federal Assimilative Crimes Act 18 USC 13 & 7). They were released a few hours later with a summons to appear in federal court in Tucson on December 4 for their arraignment.
Last Thursday, Riseley and Zawada met with officers at the base and began the dialogue they sought to continue today. Before the three entered the Fort, Betsy Lamb explained the concern for the soldiers that she shares with Riseley and Zawada: "Torture is inhuman. It is too 'up close and personal' for either victim or perpetrator to escape unharmed. For me, it represents an ultimate hardening of its perpetrators, leaving little left they couldn't be talked into doing. It is a morally bereft act capable of creating morally bereft people."
Biographical information about the three people arrested follows this press release along with the text of the flyer they brought onto the Fort to distribute.
Today's demonstration at Ft. Huachuca took place in conjunction with the annual vigil at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where 25,000 people vigiled today and 11 were arrested as they called for closing the infamous School of the Americas (now named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Dozens of Latin American military leaders who trained at the "School of Assassins" have since been convicted of torture, murder, and other heinous crimes in their own countries.
Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly, two priests who were arrested at last year's demonstration at Ft. Huachuca, are currently serving a five month prison sentence. For more information see http://tortureontrial.org/.- 30 -
BIOGRAPHIES
Mary Burton Riseley, 65 years old Mary is a fourth generation New Mexican, a Quaker and a war tax resister. She has been active in peace and anti-nuclear issue since 1970. She was the co-founder of the Los Alamos Study Group in1990, and spent five weeks in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness in the winter of 2003. She's a member of an agricultural land trust community on the Gila River in Cliff, New Mexico. She has one wonderful daughter who does community garden support work in New York City.
Betsy Lamb, 69 years old Extensive travel in Latin America made Betsy aware of the violence - including torture - being perpetrated on the people therein support of U.S. interests. In 1989, Betsy first risked arrest in nonviolent direct action when six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter were ruthlessly massacred in El Salvador by soldiers trained at the School of the Americas. With a M.A. in Theology, Betsy then worked for many years developing small parish-based Catholic communities for putting faith into action. In 2004, she completed a six-month prison sentence for her nonviolent action to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC atFt. Benning, Georgia. "Retired," she is currently involved in the peace community in Bend, Oregon, serves on the Witness for Peace Northwest board of directors, and is a war tax resister.
Jerry Zawada, 70 years old A Franciscan priest currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada. His first years in the priesthood were spent in the Philippine Islands. From the 1980's through to the present, he has joined others in acting to end torture, the nuclear threat and the wars in the Middle East and other forms of violence both locally and abroad. Among his involvements were the sanctuary movement, joining Voices in the Wilderness for several months in Iraq, and working to close the U.S. Army's School of the Americas. His activities have earned him 4 and 1/2 years in federal and county prisons and jails.
Text of flyer brought to Ft. Huachuca:
November 18, 2007
Today we join many who call for an end to our country' s use of torture in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, Afghanistan and in secret prisons elsewhere. We stand near the main gate of Ft.Huachuca, a U.S. Army post in southern Arizona, home base for Army intelligence and where all Army interrogators are trained. We are here because we can no longer tolerate violations of fundamental human rights such as detention without trial and acts of torture committed in our names behind the vast secrecy which the present administration has instituted. Although Colonel Jeff Jennings and other training staff at the fort seemed sincere in telling some of us that waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions are prohibited at Ft. Huachuca, we continue to believe that these brutal and dehumanizing methods are still happening at the hands of U.S. interrogators deployed abroad.
These acts and the secrecy surrounding them contradict our understanding of the U.S. Constitution and our treaty obligations as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. They are deeply unacceptable to our personal moral consciences.
There has been widespread opposition to our current government's imperial policies of pre-emptive war, unwarranted telephone and Internet-based surveillance, the sending of invasive national security letters, rendition of many times mistakenly suspected foreigners to countries known to practice torture and the selective abolition of civil rights like habeas corpus. We have filled the streets; we have filled the Internet and telephone lines, the op-ed and letters to the editor columns as well as Congressional mail bags.
Some of us have refused war taxes. And yet unspeakable, illegal and immoral acts are committed daily in our names as American citizens. Gates and sentry posts always relate to greed, the desire to hold on to what we have and to keep people less fortunate than we are from claiming their share. It is not true that military people are more greedy than the rest of us, but they have accepted the charge of protecting our abundance with weapons of unprecedented killing power.
They are enforcing the projection into the world of our unwillingness to share. We cannot reconcile gates, guns or sentry posts with the Sermon on the Mount. Gandhi spoke of nonviolent direct action as an experiment in truth or satyagraha. We ask ourselves: how can we best honor our need to withdraw our complicity with our government's actions?
Our simple ritual of approaching the gate of Ft. Huachuca expresses our willingness to undergo suffering rather than to inflict it, and our longing to bring our country to openness and accountability. We seek to meet with enlisted personnel and officer son Ft. Huachuca to continue a dialogue about the interrogation techniques they are learning, how easy it has been for others trained before them to fall into cruelty, and to explore with them what they each might do to prevent themselves from repeating the horrible errors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. We may be arrested. We ask for your prayers, and we ask also that you escalate - in any nonviolent way you are led - your own efforts to end torture and the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Love, peace, joy. Betsy Lamb mary burton riseley Jerry Zawada, OFM
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