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SOA
Watch / Northeast
6367 Overbrook Avenue ~ Philadelphia, PA 19151 ~ 215/473-2162 ~ www.soawne.org
September 26, 2007
For
Immediate Release
Contact: Linda Panetta (215) 694-4240 or Joanie Brooks (267) 825-6989
PROTEST
AGAINST the CRIMINALIZING OF DISSENT
The
Patriot Act… Salvadoran Style.
PROTEST
/ RALLY - Friday, September 28 (4:30 - 6:00 PM)
People from various faith and peace communities will hold a rally,
including street theater and music at City Hall (Dilworth Plaza) to call
attention to the deteriorating political situation in El Salvador, where
the ARENA party government is attempting to criminalize opposition voices.
The event will include (at 5:00 and again at 5:45 pm) street
theatre, testimonials from Salvadoran citizens and local community members
who were recently in El Salvador, and music to highlight the arrest and
detention of 13 Salvadoran citizens in connection with a non-violent,
permitted protest of water privatization in the regional town of Suchitoto
July 2.
The rally will urge people to join the campaign by sending letters
to the government of El Salvador and to members of Congress regarding the
ongoing human rights violations in El Salvador. For more information, see
the Suchitoto report on www.opticalrealities.org
.
Photos of the event – as well as photos from El Salvador -- can
be provided by freelance photographer Linda Panetta: (215) 694-4240 or Linda@opticalrealties.org.
Background:
On July 2, 2007 a tactical team of police, military and Special Forces
pummeled the community of Suchitoto for eight hours, striking young and
old alike, with countless rounds of coated bullets and gas bombs dropped
from helicopters. A child as
young as 5 years testified that police forces chased him down then
pepper-sprayed him while in his home after he attempted to give water to
the wounded.
Among
the “Suchitoto 13,” as they are called, were four leaders of CRIPDES,
a respected non-governmental organization, who were arrested en route to
the protest. Held under a new anti-terrorism law based on the U.S. Patriot
Act, protesters were held without bail in miserable prison conditions for
more than three weeks. After immense pressure from international human
rights groups as well as the U.S. Congress they were released on
“conditional liberty” July 25. They now face terrorism charges, with
possible prison sentences of 60 years.
Beyond
their individual cases is the threat of undermining
Salvador
’s faltering
democracy with criminal prosecutions of citizens exercising their right to
peaceful dissent.
“Americans
should care about what happens in El Salvador,” states Linda Panetta,
one of the event organizers. “Nearly half a billion tax payer dollars is
sent to El Salvador each year in foreign aid; funding should be
immediately halted until a thorough investigation into the human rights
violations and use of excessive force, including terrorist threats against
civilians by the military and police, has been conducted.”
Philadelphia-based
groups have taken up this issue because of a confluence of events. The
July 2 demonstration and arrests occurred when an interfaith group from
Philadelphia was in El Salvador helping to build a community center in the
village of El Milagro under the auspices of CRIPDES and the U.S. El
Salvador Sister Cities program, which links American communities and
groups with 26 Salvadoran villages. When
the group returned, they contacted U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, who raised the
issue in extended remarks in the Congressional Record. Fattah and U.S.
Rep. Bob Brady also signed a letter of concern from 40 members of Congress
to the government of El Salvador.
Solidarity
and fact-finding trips were also organized in August by Tabernacle United
Church in West Philadelphia, and then in September, Optical Realities
director, Linda Panetta and Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, (Detroit),
joined a delegation of US-based Salvadorans to Suchitoto.
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