United States militarization border issue prompted protest and arrest
Father Roy Bourgeois, human rights defender of innocent Mexicans terrorized by the U.S. military, was taken to Santa Teresa Border Station in Mexico after crossing the border through an unapproved entry point. Border Patrol dropped the charges and released him Sunday.
Father Roy and Nico Udu-gama were charged with crossing the border through an unapproved entry point and were taken to the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station in New Mexico according to a written statement Monday by School Of America watchdog group, SOA Watch.
After several hours in custody and background checks, the Border Patrol dropped charges and released the "Prophetic Priest" Father Roy and Udu-gama Sunday afternoon.
The protest was the culmination of a week-long delegation of 10 people headed by SOA Watch founder Fr. Roy. The delegation came from locals across the United States and has met with people on both sides of the border in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.
Over 60,000 people have been killed in the violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon deployed some 50,000 troops and federal police five years ago to confront the drug cartels.
Founders of the most powerful criminal gang in America and the world, Los Zetas, the Mexico-based cartel, has beene trained with US funds for "special forces" at not only Fort Bennings but also at Fort Bragg.
Mexicans succeed in a terror campaign largely due this US military training, much of which is bankrolled by the US government’s Merida Initiative that has poured over $1.5 billion into this “war on drugs,” especially in the form of US military equipment and training.
The result of this militarization has failed to curtail the flow of drug, but has caused loss of thousands of innocent Mexican lives. The death toll in Ciudad Juarez alone is nearing 10,000.
Perpetrators of the violence on both sides of this declared "war" have strong links to the US School of the Americas/WHINSEC, a U.S. taxpayer-funded military training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Ciudad Juarez Police Chief, Julian Leyzaola Perez, a graduate of the SOA, has been accused by human rights groups of participating "directly in the torture of individuals who were arbitrarily detained, transported to military bases, and subjected to beatings, electric shocks, death threats, and asphyxiation to obtain false confessions" (UNHCR report).
On the side of the drug cartels, a third of the original members of the drug cartel known as the “Zetas” are deserted members of the Mexican military who graduated from the SOA/WHINSEC.
SOA graduates across Latin America have been implicated in serious human rights abuses, from torture, disappearance, drug trafficking and murder.
In 2009, SOA graduates overthrew the government in Honduras, while in Colombia, 10,000 troops have been trained to fight the “War on Drugs”. In October 2011, Time Magazine published the article “Is It Time to Shutter the Americas' 'Coup Academy'?”
Fr. Roy has spent over four years in US federal prisons for nonviolent protests against terror training Latin American soldiers at Ft. Benning.
Known as the “Prophetic Priest,” Fr. Roy has led the struggle to close SOA, the American funded school responsible for training tortuers, dictators and death squads: terrorists working for the ultimate goal of U.S. imperialism.
Fr. Roy is as esteemed as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
This past week, people in Mexico convened for a National Forum Against Militarization in Mexico. SOA Watch stands in solidarity with them and draws inspiration from citizens of Mexico who have been rising up to resist this militarization.
Fr. Roy has said, “As a Catholic priest and as a U.S. citizen I really feel a responsibility to speak out against [SOA]… It’s being done in our name.”
Comments