School of the Americas Wach

(SOAW) An advocacy organization founded by Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters in 1990 to protest the training of mainly Latin American military officers, by the United States Army, at the School of the Americas (SOA). Most notably, SOA Watch conducts a vigil each November at the site of the academy, located on the grounds of Fort Benning, a US Army military base in Columbus, Georgia, in protest over myriad abuses committed by graduates of the academy, including murders, rapes and torture and contraventions of the Geneva Accord. Military officials deny the charges. Responding to mounting protests spearheaded by SOA Watch, in 2000 the United States Congress renamed SOA, which is now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), rather than closing the academy.