Fort Benning: A day at WHINSEC training (photo essay)

Backpacks at the ready for the 'Day Navigation Examination" out in the field for trainees at WHINSEC, held at Fort Benning, near Columbus, Mar. 2007. (Dave Bender)

This weekend marks 18th anniversary of the protest against a school on Fort Benning that teaches soldiers from Latin America. Protest organizers expect a smaller turnout because of the economy. But they are hopeful that the incoming Obama administration will work in their favor.

Trainees check water, and have a fast lunch of MRE field rations before setting out on the examination. (Dave Bender)


WHINSEC trainees getting final instructions from their trainer before setting out on the land navigation field examination. (Dave Bender/Mar. 2007)

Several dozen Latin American soldiers in camouflage, and holding maps and compasses are tearing through the brush and piney woods of the sprawling army post.

Two trainees check compass readings against a map of the area, during a land navigation portion of a medical field training course held at Fort Benning in March, 2007. (Dave Bender)

Instructors are putting them through the final exam of a land navigation course.

The soldier's are taking the class at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. It's housed at Fort Benning.

Two trainees make one last check of a map of the area, during a land navigation portion of a medical field training course held at Fort Benning in March, 2007. (Dave Bender)

Just outside the post demonstrators are gearing up for an annual protest marking the killing of six Jesuit priests, and others in El Salvador in 1989.


WHINSEC trainees during a classroom lecture on administration, held at Fort Benning in Mar. 2007. (Dave Bender)

Some of those responsible for the killings had attended the school – then known as the U.S. Army School of the Americas.

Lee Rials is WHINSEC's Public Affairs Officer. He says there's no direct correlation between their training and the graduate's deeds:

"There is not a single example of anyone who has taken a course at the School of the Americas or at WHINSEC, who has used that information to commit a crime. Not a single example has ever been shown. This whole movement is based on the false premise that mere attendance at a U.S. course has a cause-effect relationship on later behavior. And that's not been indicated; no evidence of that anywhere."

For the U.S. the school is an important foreign policy tool. But opponents are adamant about closing it down. They say WHINSEC's mandatory human rights courses are only cosmetic.
Their protest has been growing from year to year – organizers say 20,000 took part last year.

But a deepening recession may rein in those numbers.

Father Roy Bourgeois is a Maryknoll priest and founder of School of the Americas Watch. He's worried about the turnout this year:

"I have a little concern with the economy, as we all do. I was in Austin recently giving a talk. For eight years they've brought a chartered bus here filled with people from Texas. Well, the cost has doubled. Some, simply, out of Des Moines, Iowa, cannot get on that chartered bus, so they're bringing a couple of vans. I mean people are struggling."

On top of that, Bourgeois is in the midst of a wrenching personal struggle. He's facing excommunication for publically supporting women joining the Catholic priesthood.

But despite the clouds hanging over the event, supporters are still preparing workshops, giant puppets and posters, crosses and caskets for a symbolic funeral procession commemorating the deaths.

SOA Watch organizer instructs marchers in mock funeral procession outside the gates of Fort Benning during 2007 protest. (Dave Bender)

While fewer protesters may be lining the streets for that solemn event, Bourgeois feels that President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20 will bring his goal a little closer:

"One thing I admire about President-Elect Obama is his openness to other leaders. I think he's got much more respect for other countries coming from his own background and experiences. I think he's much more sensitive to other cultures, their leaders, their people, their histories, and less aggressive as a leader."

Fr. Roy Bourgeois, at his office-apartment located in a small complex several hundred feet from one of Fort Benning's entrance gates, and the site of the annual protest. (Dave Bender/file)

SOA Watch hopes an online petition calling on Obama to issue an executive order closing WHINSEC will gain steam.

But school officials say WHINSEC is established by law and it would take a lot more than an online petition to change that fact.

Lee Rials during a tour of the former WHINSEC headquarters at Fort Benning. (Dave Bender)

Spokesman Rials is also doubtful that Obama will have any time or interest, in the face of a morass of problems awaiting him in the Oval Office on January 21st:

"I would think a national petition would require millions of signatures to get any serious thought, and I just don't believe this organization - because it seems to be getting smaller in the last year or so - will have the ability to draw those kinds of numbers."

There's been talk by organizers of moving the annual rally from Columbus to Washington, D.C., where they might have a better chance of reaching those numbers.

But Bourgeois believes that the soul of the protest should remain where it began in 1990 - at ground zero: outside his tiny apartment at the gates of Fort Benning.

The protest concludes this afternoon.

Click here for more GPB News coverage about SOA Watch and Fort Benning.

(All trainees shown in this photo essay are intended as an illustration of WHINSEC operations, and are unconnected to the events described in the article)

Columbus: Six arrested at SOA Watch rally

The group SOA Watch says six people have been arrested so far at Fort Benning, near Columbus where thousands have gathered to protest a school there that trains Latin American soldiers, police and government officials.

Hendrik Voss is communications director for SOA Watch, which seeks to close the school. He says the six were arrested shortly after 9 a.m. Sunday for coming onto the grounds of the military base.

Police said Sunday evening that the six all made bond and have been released.

Voss says 20,000 people attended the event, but police peg that number considerably lower at about 8,500.

The Army's School of the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced in 2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Protesters at the 2007 SOA Watch rally outside the gates of Fort Benning holding crosses and a doll symbolizing those killed in El Salvador in 1989. (Dave Bender/file)

The protests outside the base commemorate six Jesuit priests who were killed along with their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989. Some of the killers had attended the School of the Americas.

Click here for more GPB News coverage about SOA WAtch and Fort Benning.

(AP)

Ga. priest facing excommunication will appeal

School of the Americans Watch founder Fr. Roy Bourgeois holding what he says is an Army-censored list of students attending WHISC. (Dave Bender/file)

Georgia priest facing excommunication for supporting the ordination of women said Friday he plans to visit the Vatican with a contingent of fellow priests and a bishop to appeal the decision.

Roy Bourgeois, 69, a Maryknoll priest and nationally known peace activist, ran afoul of Vatican doctrine by participating in an Aug. 9 ceremony in Lexington, Ky., to ordain Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a member of a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Recent popes have said the Roman Catholic Church cannot ordain women because Christ chose only males as apostles.

"Who are we as men to say to women that our call to the priesthood is valid, but yours is not?" Bourgeois said in a telephone interview.

"As Catholics we profess that the invitation to priesthood comes from God, and I believe that we are hampering with the sacred when we say that women must be excluded from being priests. That invitation is from God."

Bourgeois said the toughest part of the ordeal was informing his 95-year-old father, a devout Roman Catholic. He said he drove to his family's home in Lutcher, La., near New Orleans, to tell him, and that his father shed tears and then told his family that God had protected Bourgeois before, and would continue to today.

"When he said God will take care of him, I wept," said Bourgeois.

Bourgeois' excommunication likely would be automatic, requiring no further action from the Holy See, said the chief Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. Excommunication is the most severe penalty under church law, cutting off a Catholic from receiving or administering sacraments. The ordained woman, Sevre-Duszynska, also faces excommunication.

Bourgeois said that he recently received a letter from the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, offering him a chance to recant within 30 days to avoid excommunication. But Lombardi said he did not know of such a letter, and Bourgeois said he has informed the Vatican he will not repent.

Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran, served as a missionary in Bolivia and El Salvador. Concerned by what he had witnessed, he returned to the United States and formed School of Americas Watch, a group that holds annual demonstrations against a Fort Benning school that is now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. He lives in an apartment outside Fort Benning's main gate.


Bourgeois (blue shirt), and Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich comfort a Guatemalan mother and daughter sobbing against a entrance fence at Fort Benning during annual SOA Watch protest in 2007. The two women, who now live in Chicago said they were grieving over the loss of seven members of their family to military forces in their country in 1981. (Dave Bender/file)

The deadline for his excommunication is Nov. 21, Bourgeois said - just one day before the start of the 19th annual protest at the school by the group. Even if he is excommunicated, Bourgeois said he will remain active in SOA Watch and the church.

"I won't be able to say Mass in Catholic churches, but my ministry in SOA Watch and speaking at colleges and churches will continue," he said.

Bourgeois unpacking fliers and other protest paraphernalia at his apartment and office alongside the gates of Fort Benning, before the 2007 SOA Watch rally. (Dave Bender)

Click here for more GPB News coverage about Fr. Bourgeois and SOA Watch.

(AP)

SOA Watch revving up for weekend protests

Fr. Bourgeois unpacking posters and protest material at his apartment outside Ft. Benning in preparation for upcoming demonstrations. (Dave Bender)

The SOA Watch group is gearing up for their annual demonstrations outside of Ft. Benning, and they are planning big.

Father Roy Bourgeois, who founded the organization in 1990, says they're expecting 20,000 supporters to flood Columbus this weekend:

“We are gathering here in peace. We are gathering here to speak for countless brothers and sisters in Latin America who have been the victims of this school and the violence - the graduates - who have returned to their home countries, especially in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and many other countries – Columbia, where most of them are coming from today.”

The movement wants the federal government to close down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation – once known as the School of the Americas – which is located at the army post.

Fr. Bourgeois holding a list of WHINSEC students, with names blacked-out for security reasons, according to the school. (Dave Bender)

Bourgeois says the school is training military and law-enforcement groups that are culpable of human rights abuses in their home countries.

Click here for more GPB News coverage about Ft. Benning.