[1] Military officials state that even if graduates commit war crimes after they return to their home country, the school itself should not be held accountable for their actions.
Responding to "mounting protests",[2][3] which were spearheaded by SOA Watch, the United States Congress renamed the School of the Americas the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), rather than closing the academy, in 2000.
Inspired by the case of slain Archbishop Óscar Romero, who said "we who have a voice must speak for the voiceless," former priest Roy Bourgeois, Larry Rosebaugh OMI, and Linda Ventimiglia posed as military officers and crossed into Ft. Benning in 1983.
The two men and a woman climbed a tree near the barracks housing Salvadoran troops and read the final homily of Archbishop Oscar Romero through megaphones.
Following the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Central American University in El Salvador in which graduates of the School of the Americas were involved,[5][6] SOA Watch organized an annual protest to be held on the anniversary of the massacre beginning the next year.
We act in solidarity with organizations and movements working for justice and peace throughout the Americas.Protest demonstrations are staged by SOA Watch at the main gate of Fort Moore in November each year, in commemoration of the anniversary of the 1989 murders of Jesuits in El Salvador.
The original band of ten resisters who marched onto the then-Fort Benning and splashed blood upon the School of Americas to commemorate the first anniversary of the UCA massacre has grown in recent years to a community of 10,000.
People come from across the country and around the globe to honor victims of crimes committed by students of the School of the Americas, as well as their survivors, with music, words, puppets and theatre.
"Sounds of Protest" Audio Documentary On November 20, 2010, at least 20 people attending the vigil were arrested, including Kaelyn Forde, a journalist from Russia Today, and her cameraman, Jon Conway.
Soldiers, armed to the teeth, surrounded the square opposite the cemetery and I sincerely believed that, in a matter of seconds, they would let off a round of machine-gun fire.