Teaching Tyranny

Georgetown University has recently announced that former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe will be named a “distinguished scholar in the practice of global leadership,” and will soon begin giving seminars at the university’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS). Uribe has said it is a “great honor” for him, and that his “greatest wish and happiness is to contribute in the continuous emergence of future leaders.”

Action details here.

• More than 3 million Colombians (out of a population of about 40 million) have been forced to flee their homes, giving Colombia the second-largest population of internally displaced persons in the world after Sudan.
• More than 70 members of the Colombian Congress are under criminal investigation or have been convicted for allegedly collaborating with the paramilitaries. Nearly all these congresspersons are members of President Uribe’s coalition in Congress, and the Uribe administration repeatedly undermined the investigations and discredited the Supreme Court justices who started them.
• Colombia has the highest rate of killings of trade unionists in the world. A clandestine gravesite of 2,000 non-identified bodies was recently discovered directly beside a military base in La Macarena, in central Colombia. When the news became public, Uribe flew to the Macarena and said publicly that accusing the armed forces of human rights abuses was a tactic used by the guerrilla. These comments put the lives of those victims who spoke at the event in grave danger.
• Starting in 2008, reports came out that the Colombian military was luring poor young men from their homes with promises of employment, then killing them and presenting them as combat casualties. The practice not only served to stack battle statistics, but also financially benefited the soldiers involved, as Uribe’s government had, since 2005, awarded monetary and vacation bonuses for each insurgent killed. Human rights groups cite 3,000 or more “false positives”.

A ‘distinguished scholar in the practice of global leadership‘, just as torturers teach law it seems the empire is intent on ensuring future generations of elite war criminals. Georgetown is also a Jesuit university, so is this furthering the right wing Catholic’s elite war on progressives/leftists, this is hardly taking the side of justice by honouring Uribe. Although Jesuits are not in the majority on the Board of Directors, if this is not their choice they should have the courage to speak out as opposition is growing from other catholic grassroots groups and human rights organisations.

Meanwhile the US catholic church, after excommunicating Fr. Roy Bourgeois in 2008 (who founded SOAW) for his views on the ordination of women and for taking part in an ordination of female priests, this year ceased its US foreign mission arm Maryknoll from donating to School of the Americas Watch.They again stated the reason was Bourgeois’ feminism. Roy Bourgeois belonged to The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers who annually gave $17,000 to SOAW, however they apparently adjudge conforming to misogynistic doctrine more essential than actively stopping the US from training torturers for deployment in Latin America, this is their official statement emailed to me upon my request for clarification-

On May 24, 2010 Father Edward Dougherty, Superior General of the Maryknoll Society, met with Father Roy Bourgeois to discuss the Society’s decision to discontinue financial support to the School of the Americas (SOA) Watch.

Given Father Bourgeois’ central role as the founder and public face of the SOA Watch, Society leadership has determined that it cannot continue its financial support of that organization without giving the impression that it also supports the actions of its leader concerning the issue of women’s ordination. (Those actions led to his automatic excommunication by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2008.)

This decision is not intended to be punitive and is not designed to put pressure on Father Bourgeois, or on the SOA Watch organization and its activities.  Maryknoll continues its solidarity with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, and is unambiguous in its support of the goals of the SOA Watch.