Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release
May 8, 2000

Human Rights Advocate Examines U.S. "School of the Assassins" in
Lawrence Lecture

 
     APPLETON, WIS. -- Former U.S. Naval Officer turned Catholic priest
and human rights activist Rev. Roy Bourgeois discusses the U.S. Army
School of the Americas and why he wants it closed in a visit to Lawrence
University.  
     Bourgeois presents "School of the Assassins," Wednesday, May 17 at
7:30 p.m. in Lawrence's Wriston Art Center auditorium.  The event is
free and open to the public.  
     Based at Fort Benning, Ga., the U.S. Army's School of the Americas
(SOA) trains soldiers and military personnel from Latin American
countries in infantry tactics, counter-insurgency, military intelligence
and commando operations. The training, funded by U.S. taxpayers, is
conducted in Spanish and taught primarily by Latin American instructors.
More than 56,000 members of Latin American militaries reportedly have
attended the SOA since its founding in 1946.
     Bourgeois, who earned the Purple Heart while serving in Vietnam,
left the military for the ministry after his discharge and spent five
years as a Bolivian missionary.  He founded SOA Watch in 1990 in
response to the murder of four U.S. nuns and four missionaries by
soldiers in El Salvador in the 1980s as well as other human rights
abuses carried out by Latin American military personnel.   
     Bourgeois, whose office sits just outside the gates of Ft. Benning,
has advocated the closing of SOA through vigils, fasts, demonstrations
and nonviolent protests. He maintains that SOA graduates are responsible
for countless human rights atrocities, including the assassination of
Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Jesuit massacre in El Salvador and the
torture and murder of a U.N. worker in Chile.
     In 1996, the Pentagon released seven Spanish-language training
manuals used at the SOA, which The New York Times reported "recommended
interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and
arresting the relatives of those being questioned."