Tortilla con Sal, September 5th
SOAW and Nicanet members met President Ortega and former UN Assembly President Fr. Miguel d'Escoto
A delegation of the US peace organization School of the Americas Watch and the Nicanet solidarity group met with President Daniel Ortega on September 4th to ask that Nicaragua withdraw its military personnel from the training programs operated by the US Army's notorious School of the Americas. The delegation included Fr. Roy Bourgeois who, with his SOAW colleagues, has campaigned for decades to close the School of the Americas facility. For decades, the SOA has trained generations of Latin American military personnel in techniques of repression and human rights violations including torture, forced disappearance and selective assassination.
Fr. Bourgeois commented, "The School of the Americas is well known in Latin America as a school for murderers, torturers and perpetrators of coups d'etat. It is the symbol of United States foreign policy whose role is always the same : to protect US economic interests and control the natural resources of Latin American countries.” Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Venezuela, and recently Ecuador, have publicaly stated their decision to withdraw troops from the training programs offered by the School of the Americas.
The meeting with President Ortega came at the end of a nine day visit by a joint delegation of SOAW and the Nicanet solidarity organization. SOAW organizer Lisa Sullivan commented, “The delegation visited Esteli and Managua and met with many sectors of society, rural and urban communities, women and youth organizations, health and education centers, cooperatives, religious and ex-pat organizations. We also met with government officials, human rights representatives, media and opposition leaders."
The delegation was impressed by the many positive changes in Nicaragua and especially the clear and categorical commitment by the Sandinista government to reduce poverty and address the problems faced by women and youth in the country.
Sullivan noted that President Daniel Ortega “stressed the importance of the growing unity and support among Latin American nations, and expressed gratitude for their economic solidarity. This is, however, still not sufficient to allow Nicaragua to be totally independent of the US, a nation that continues to punish Nicaragua for any slight step out of line by withholding their funds while also blocking other international funds destined for Nicaragua.”
President Ortega went on to comment to the SOAW delegation, “The SOA is a symbol of death, a symbol of terror. We have been gradually reducing our numbers of troops at the SOA, sending only five last year and none this year. We have now entered a new phase and we will not continue to send troops to the SOA.”
Like other member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), Nicaragua recently withdrew from the Interamerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, part of the Organization of American States framework dominated by the United States and Canada, both stalwart NATO members. It is a logical development as part of Latin America's increasing autonomy for Nicaragua to follow its fellow ALBA countries in withdrawing its military personnel from the programs of the School of the Americas. It is the first Central American country to do so.
More information:
http://www.soawlatina.org/comunicadonica.htm
http://www.soawlatina.org/prensa.html
http://www.nicanet.org