July 13, 1998
Dear Member of Congress,
The Colombia Human Rights Committee of Washington urges you to vote to close the School of the Americas. Since 1981, we have monitored the violence and human rights violations in Colombia and have worked to support Colombian groups working for peace and justice through non-violent means. The evidence is irrefutable. Graduates of the School of the Americas have been responsible for ruthless human rights abuses in the escalating violence in Colombia.
In Colombia, 124 out of 247, fully one-half, of the military personnel cited as human rights violators in the 1992 report, State Terror in Colombia produced by the World Organization Against Torture, were graduates of the School of the Americas. Probably the most well-documented case is that of the Trujillo AChainsaw@ Massacres in 1988-91, in which at least 107 villagers were tortured and murdered. Eyewitnesses said that Col. Alirio Antonio Urueña Jaramillo, trained at the School of the Americas in 1976 in Small Unit Infantry Tactics, tortured people with water hoses, stuffed them into coffee sacks, and chopped them into pieces with a chainsaw. The decapitated body of the local priest was found floating down the river. This case was brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Col. Urueña was found guilty and dismissed from the army in 1995. However, he was never punished for his horrific crimes, while the U.S. organizers of non-violent protest to close the School of the Americas at Fort Benning have spent the past 6 months in prison.
Even more disturbing, some of the present architects of the collaboration between the Colombia military and para-military have been trained at the School of the Americas. In 1997, according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, over 3500 people were killed for political reason. Paramilitaries were responsible for 69% of these killings. One of the areas hardest hit is the region of Urabá until recently under the command of Col. Rito Alejo del Rio Rojas, trained at the School of the Americas in 1967. I met with Col. Del Rio Rojas in August 1997 during a human rights delegation investigating the crisis of Colombia=s one million internally displaced. When I asked him why the Army wasn=t more aggressively pursuing the paramilitaries in Urabá, Col. Rito Alejo said, AWe don=t know where they are?@ Yet, the previous day our delegation has passed through a paramilitary checkpoint with soldiers in full view not far from Col. del Rio Rojas= military base. Sadly, Col. del Rio Rojas was recently promoted to command the area around Bogotá, while army personnel who have raised questions about military collaboration with the paramilitaries have been relieved of their command. The legacy of human rights abuses by Colombian graduates of the School of the Americas continues.
Now is the time to vote to close the School of the Americas.
Sincerely yours,
Barbara Gerlach, Co-Chair
Colombia Human Rights Committee