[874] in peace2
Help Stop Negroponte Nomination (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Sun Jul 15 18:37:22 2001
Message-Id: <200107152237.SAA15718@gold.mit.edu>
To: peace-list@MIT.EDU, mitai-exec@MIT.EDU
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 18:37:06 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 13:30:19 -0400
To: martha.soto@umassmed.edu
From: Martha Soto <martha.soto@umassmed.edu>
Subject: Help Stop Negroponte Nomination
Thanks to Gabe Camacho for sending this.
Help oppose the nomination of John Negroponte as the next UN
Ambassador from the U.S. Sen. John Kerry is on the Foreign
Relations Committee that will help decide if the full Senate
will consider his nomination. Please let both your Senators know
you oppose this nomination of someone with connections to
the Honduran Death Squads of the 1980s.
- - M.S.
- --- ERNO ROSENTHAL <ersh2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:30:38 -0700
From: "Julia A. Dowd" <dowd@usfca.edu>
Subject: Negroponte Nomination
Dear SOA Watch West supporters,
As many of you know, Sr. Laeticia Bordes has been
leading a nationwide campaign to block the nomination of John
Negroponte as the next UN Ambassador from the US. (See article below.)
This week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is doing their background
research on Negroponte. If the nomination is opposed by the committee, it
will not go to the Senate.
We ask you to please phone the following members of the Foreign Relations
Committee regarding the hearings on the nomination of John Negroponte as UN
Ambassador. Please call THIS WEEK (between July 10-13). Ask them to
OPPOSE the nomination and request that President Bush revoke it.
MEMBERS OF FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE
Democrats:
Joseph Biden, Delaware - Ranking Member (202) 224-5042
Paul Sarbanes, Maryland (Very supportive, make sure he doesn't back down)
(202) 224-4524
Christopher Dodd, Connecticut (202) 224-2823
John Kerry, Massachusetts (202) 224-2742
Russell Feingold, Wisconsin (202) 224-5323
Paul Wellstone, Minnesota (202) 224-5641
Barbara Boxer, California (202) 224-3553
Robert Torricelli, New Jersey (202) 224-3224
Bill Nelson, Florida (202) 224-5274
Republican:
Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island (202) 224-2921
(He's a liberal republican. Might vote with Democrats)
If you know any folks in any of the above states, please alert them to put
in a call to their Senator.
Thank you so much.
Laetitia Bordes for SOA Watch West
*************************************************
NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY
John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the
next ambassador to the United Nations? My ears perked up.
I turned up the volume on the radio. I began listening more
attentively. Yes, I had heard correctly. Bush was nominating
Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran death
squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981
to 1985.
My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte
in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to
Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for
answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El
Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in
1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's
secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were
forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed
into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to
find out what had happened to these women.
John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had
been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the
documentation that previous delegations had gathered. Negroponte
denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted
that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran
government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter
with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During
Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million
to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and
mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support
the Contras.
John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the
Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers
in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights
violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran
military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive
training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their
own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence
Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas.
General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the
Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982,
the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established
a regional military training center for Central American forces,
principally directed at improving fighting forces of the
Salvadoran military.
In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and
disappearance of at least 184 political opponents.
It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human
rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982,
John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had
happened to the women we were looking for. I had to wait 13
years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in
1996 Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in
Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the
women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981
and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police,
before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military.
After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were
thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun
that the North American authorities were well aware of what had
happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it
was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.
Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story.
Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate
John Negroponte, other people have suddenly been "disappearing", so
to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on
March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden
deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the
United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony
against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings. One of these
recent deportees just happens to be General Luis Alonso Discua, founder
of Battalion 3-16. In February, Washington revoked the visa of
Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then, Discua has
gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.
Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed
horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country
at the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human
rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our
Senators, I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte
really is?
Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
282 Shoreview Avenue
Pacifica, CA 94044
Tel. (650) 359-6635
e-mail lbordes@jps.net
------- End of Forwarded Message
