Peace March says: ‘Ban killer drones’
By Dianne Mathiowetz on May 9, 2014
Human
rights activists walked from Ft. Benning, Ga., to the Georgia Tech
campus in Atlanta during the days from April 26 to May 8 to bring
attention to the role played by these institutions in the illegal and
criminal drone warfare being carried out by the U.S. This “Right to
Peace” march was sponsored by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition
with cooperation from SOAWatch.
The goal of the march was to tie together the
decades-long policies of repression and extrajudicial killings
practiced by Latin American officers and soldiers trained at the
notorious School of the Americas, based at Ft. Benning, with the high
tech murder by drones equipped with missiles and bombs that terrorize
communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Ft. Benning is also a testing site for newer
drones made possible by research being done at Georgia Tech to build
fully autonomous ones that will operate from a computer program, locate a
target and destroy it without any human intervention or guidance.
The peace walkers made a side trip to the
Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., a Corrections Corporation of
America facility that holds almost 2,000 immigrant detainees in inhumane
conditions and often for months and even years, without legal due
process. While holding a brief vigil at the gates, they had an
opportunity to talk with family members of the detainees who must travel
long distances to this rural location to visit their loved one for a
single hour. Many of those held inside detention centers fled the
violence and poverty created by U.S. policies in their home country.
The Right to Peace walk went through a number
of small to medium towns and cities, carrying their signs such as “When
Drones Fly, Children Die” and “Stop Killer Drones,” slogans which
evoked honks of approval and questions from passersby, leading to
thoughtful conversation and rarely, hostile responses.
The last three miles of the walk began at the
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center with a short rally, and then
proceeded along Peachtree Street, ending at Georgia Tech in front of the
building where graduation ceremonies were to take place.
Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOAWatch, who
walked the entire way, called on the Georgia Tech administration to
educate for peace and to reject militarism and violence. He invited the
students to join the movement for peace and justice, to help ban drone
warfare and to close the School of the Americas.
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