| • Yearly participation in the funeral procession commemorating the murders of our Latin American brothers and sisters at the gate of Fort Benning, GA and non-violent civil disobedience has raised the awareness of many U.S. citizens to the atrocities perpetuated at the SOA (WHISC). Over 10,000 people participated in last years’ vigil. • Partly as a result of the campaign run by SOA Watch, several US congressmen in 2001 tried to shut the school down. They were defeated by 10 votes. The House of Representatives, however, voted to close it and then immediately reopened it under a different name. • In June of 2001, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, once a student at the school, was convicted in Guatemala of murdering Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. This same Colonel coordinated the "anti-insurgency" campaign which obliterated 448 Mayan Indian villages and murdered tens of thousands of their people. • Montisinos and the leaders of the Grupo Colina death squad in Fujimori's Peru benefitted from the school's instruction. • Over two thirds of the officers cited by the United Nations Truth Commission for the worst atrocities during El Salvador's civil war were alumni of the SOA. • The February 2000 Human Rights Watch Report on Colombian military implicates seven SOA graduates in 1999 crimes including kidnaping, murder, massacres and setting up paramilitary groups. • The 1998 and 1999 US State Department Reports on Human Rights in Colombia provide information implicating SOA graduates in abuses including a 1997 massacred, an illegal raid on a human rights group in 1998, and involvement in kidnaping and murder in 1999. • SOA trained Latin American militaries use paramilitaries in counter insurgency warfare. On September 5, 2001, the US State Department placed the AUC, Colombia’s main paramilitary, on its list of terrorist organizations. | 
