Two stories that CISPES has been pushing publically as part of our recent campaigns appeared in this year's Project Censored top 25 censored stories. Thanks especially to Wes Enzinna and Jason Wallach for working hard to break through the mainstream media censorship around El Salvador!
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
Sources:
Upside Down World, June 14, 2007
Title: “Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America”
Author: Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008
Title: “Another SOA?: A Police Academy in El Salvador Worries Critics”
Author: Wes Enzinna
CISPES, March 15, 2007
Title: “ILEA Funding Approved by Salvadoran Right Wing Legislators”
Author: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
AlterNet, August 31, 2007
Title: “Is George Bush Restarting Latin America’s ‘Dirty Wars’?”
Author: Benjamin Dangl
Student Researchers: Courtney Snow, Erica Elkinton, and April Pearce
Faculty Evaluator: Jessica Taft, PhD, and Jeffrey Reeder, PhD
A resurgence of US-backed militarism threatens peace and democracy inLatin America. By 2005, US military aid to Latin America had increasedby thirty-four times the amount spent in 2000. In a marked shift in USmilitary strategy, secretive training of Latin American military andpolice personnel that used to just take place at the notorious Schoolof the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia—including torture andexecution techniques—is now decentralized. The 2008 US federal budgetincludes $16.5 million to fund an International Law Enforcement Academy(ILEA) in El Salvador, with satellite operations in Peru. Withprovision of immunity from charges of crimes against humanity, eachacademy will train an average of 1,500 police officers, judges,prosecutors, and other law enforcement officials throughout LatinAmerica per year in “counterterrorism techniques.”
AND…
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
Sources:
NACLA–Upside Down World, August 24, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Water Inc. and the Criminalization of Protest”
Author: Jason Wallach
The Nation, December 31, 2007
Title: “GWOT: El Salvador”
Author: Wes Enzinna
Peacework, September 2007
Title: “Salvadoran Activists Targeted with US-Style Repression”
Author: Chris Damon
In These Times, November 13, 2007
Title: “El Salvador’s Patriot Act”
Author: Jacob Wheeler
Inter Press Service, August 19, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Spectre of War Looms After 15 Years of Peace”
Author: Raul Gutierrez
Student Researchers: Juana Som and Andrea Lochtefeld
Faculty Evaluator: Jeffrey Reeder, PhD
Salvadoran police violently captured community leaders and residents ata July 2007 demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’swater supply and distribution systems. Close range shooting of rubberbullets and tear gas was used against community members for protestingthe rising cost, and diminishing access and quality, of local waterunder privatization. Fourteen were arrested and charged with terrorism,a charge that can hold a sixty-year prison sentence, under ElSalvador’s new “Anti-terrorism Law,” which is based on the USA PATRIOTAct. While criminalization of political expression and social protestsignals an alarming danger to the peace and human rights secured bySalvadorans since its brutal twelve-year civil war, the US governmentpublicly supports the Salvadoran government and the passage of thedraconian anti-terrorism law that took effect October 2006.
