Janese Johnson

Up until 2005 when the United States government admitted to the United Nations that it had been involved with torture, most Americans would not have even thought that this country would partake in such horrible behavior. Most of us thought it was behavior engaged in by other, less-evolved countries, but certainly not ours. The shocking truth of Abu Ghraib turned that misconception around pretty fast for many people.

When we look at the history of the U.S. and torture, we can see that the U.S. has been actively involved with training, supporting and funding torture since 1946, when it started a training program in Panama for Latin American military personnel in order to protect some of its economic interests.

That training school then changed in 1959, following the Cuban Revolution, to focus more attention on tactics and methods for stopping Communism. Some of this training resorted to torture.

The school then moved to Georgia and became the ìSchool of the Americas.î The ìschoolî has offered training in torture from manuals for its ìstudentsî as part of their curriculum. The manuals have now all disappeared, but the school is still operating in Georgia ó having changed its name to the ìWestern Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.î

Sister Diana Ortiz is unfortunately one of the victims of the schoolís ìtraining.î She was a nun in a small village in Guatemala helping the children learn to read and write. She apparently was considered a threat, and notified many times to stop.

She refused, and ended up tortured, raped, and thrown in a pit of dead and still-living bodies. She was eventually released with a warning to stop teaching.

Sister Ortiz said that the men who tortured her were locals ó and the leader was American. She is now traveling the U.S. in protest of the American-backed torture that is taking place all over Latin America, and is spreading throughout the world now that the U.S. military has pushed it even more.

Even if only one person has been tortured at the hands of the U.S., that is still too many. Since the majority of Americans do not want to support the practice of torturing other living beings, this treatment needs to stop.

And it will only stop when enough people stand up to it and insist that it is unacceptable to torture anyone.

There are quite a few organizations that are standing up against torture. One of them is Amnesty International, which will be starting a campaign to denounce torture† in October.

At this current time Amnesty International is working on restoring habeas Corpus and closing Guantanamo Bay in the United States. It is also focused on stopping torture everywhere that it is used from all over the world. It is not currently focused on School of Americas, but School of Americas Watch is.

The local Amnesty International group will be having a community meeting Sept. 11th at 227 Edgewood rd at 7:00 pm. Since the group meets every other month, they will be working on this campaign by watching two short interviews on those who have been tortured lasting 20 minutes in all, followed by discussion, the letter writing. If you need more information than please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

We cannot keep the wool over our eyes and pretend that torture is not going on or that our country is not involved in it. Innocent people around the world are being tortured and need our voice. It takes a few minutes of our life to be a voice that can make a life of a difference for someone else.