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<h1 class="title">Venezuelan Police University Campaigns against School
of the Americas </h1>
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Dec 17, 2013<br>
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<p class="byline"> By <span class="author">Tamara Pearson</span> </p>
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<p>Merida, 17<sup>th</sup> December 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) –
Venezuela’s National Experimental University for Security (UNES), which
trains police in human rights and preventative policing, has launched a
two month, nationwide campaign against the US run School of the
Americas (SOA).</p>
<p>Pablo Fernandez, head of curriculum development at the university,
said that it was a “campaign of solidarity with Latin American
movements that are working to close the School of the Americas... which
represents, for the whole American continent, one of the most perverse
expressions of what used to be the doctrine of national security”.</p>
<p>Launched at the start of this month, the campaign includes forums
with activists and academics, film showings of the documentary The
School of the Americas: School of Murderers, a concert “for peace and
closing the School of the Americas”– organised with the National Front
of Rebellious Bands and other musical groups, and postcards signed by
people in favour of closing the school, to be handed over to the US
embassy and the head offices of the UN and the OAS in Venezuela.</p>
<p>The campaign aims to raise UNES students’ and the general public’s
awareness of the origin, historical objectives, and actions of the SOA.</p>
<p>“This proposal that came from the UNES, has been taken on and
supported by President Nicolas Maduro and foreign minister Elias Jaua,
so that it can grow into a national campaign, involving other
universities, other social movements... so that all of Venezuela can
say enough repression, enough interference, never again such human
rights violations in Latin America, nor anywhere in the world,”
Fernandez said.</p>
<p>“The School of the Americas has obliged our soldiers and military to
create a distortion of the reality of our homeland and to betray her.
At this school they train different Latin Americans to be traitors...
so we should close this school for the sake of peace, life, and love of
our homeland,” said Eduy Ramirez, at a UNES anti-SOA event in Aragua
state.</p>
<p>He said the UNES in Aragua-Carabobo would work with the newly
elected mayor of Linares Alcantara municipality, Alexis Zamora, “for
peace and life”. The UNES in Aragua state has 1263 students studying
policing and criminology, and 98 teachers.</p>
<p>At a film showing in the UNES of Anozoategui state, of We Are One
America, director of the university, Damian Mas, stated, “We want to
internationalise our university so that brothers [sic] from different
ally countries can come here and ... receive a humanist education, one
that is respectful of human rights.”</p>
<p>UNES-Anzoategui student, Rene Ortiz said, “The difference between
both schools is that the School of the Americas belongs to the old
policing model that sought to repress, humiliate, and mistreat, while
the UNES trains students under the new preventative model of citizen
security, in order to lower the levels of violence and insecurity”.</p>
<p>The SOA is a US military combat training school for Latin American
soldiers based in Fort Benning, Georgia.</p>
<p>“It’s run by the US army, and has trained military and police since
the 1940s... the majority of the dictatorships, disappearances, and
coups [in Latin America] have been organised by SOA graduates.
President Chavez ordered that Venezuela stop sending soldiers to the
SOA in 2004, and since then, six other countries have followed suit,”
Lisa Sullivan of SOA Watch told Venezuelanalysis.com.</p>
<p>The SOA, renamed as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation in 2001, sends US instructors to Chile, Colombia, and
Paraguay to train their soldiers, while a range of countries send their
soldiers to the school in the US. Those countries which sent the most
in 2012 were Colombia with 836 soldiers, Chile (162), and Honduras (93).</p>
<p>Since it was founded, the SOA has trained over 61,000 Latin American
soldiers in combat techniques, military intelligence, and torture
techniques.</p>
<p>The UNES was founded in 2009 in order to train the new national
Venezuelan police force with new methodology and values. The university
aims to recreate the role of police from a community perspective and to
transform the power relationship between police and society.</p>
<p>The university also has a strong focus on human rights, crime
prevention, financing research on issues related to delinquency as well
as on expanding police officers’ role in addressing the social causes
of crime. Many of the university’s teachers specialise in libratory
education and leftwing politics.</p>
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