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For Immediate Release
February, 08 2016, 08:45am EDT
Contact:
info@soaw.org,or call (202) 234 3440
School of the Americas Graduates Responsible For 1989 Jesuit Massacre Face Extradition to Spain, Military Officers Arrested in El Salvador
NORTH CAROLINA/EL SALVADOR
The 1989 massacre of 16-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos, and six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador, that galvanized opposition to the U.S. relationship with Central American death squads and that sparked the movement to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas, is making headlines again.
On Friday, February 5, 2016, a U.S. judge in North Carolina cleared the way for SOA graduate and retired Salvadoran Colonel, Inocente Orlando Montano, to be extradited to face charges in Spain. Col. Inocente Orlando Montano was trained by the U.S. military at the School of the Americas in 1970.
On Saturday, February 06, 2016, El Salvador's national police force announced that four ex-soldiers, who were also involved in the massacre, were arrested at the behest of Interpol in an operation that began Friday night.
The four former military officers arrested in El Salvador are Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno, Sargent Tomas Zarpate Castillo, Sargent Antonio Avalos Vargas, and Corporal Angel Perez Vasquez. Avalos Vargas and Perez Vasquez attended the Small Unit Training and Management course at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1988 and 1987 respectively, before allegedly participating in the brutal 1989 massacre. El Salvador's Supreme Court is expected to rule on their extraditions to Spain in the coming days. Twelve other former Salvadoran soldiers with international warrants in connection with the UCA massacre remain at large, and it is unknown whether they are in El Salvador or have fled the country.
A United Nations Truth Commission cited 26 Salvadoran officers for the 1989 "execution-style" massacre. Nineteen of those were trained at the School of the Americas, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). After its role in training human rights abusers came to light, Central Americans frequently dubbed the SOA the "School of Assassins."
The SOA made headlines again in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission, and even in the face of hundreds of documented cases of human rights abuses connecting to soldiers trained at the institution, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place.
Protests calling for the closure of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC have taken place around the November 16 anniversary of the San Salvador massacre since 1990. Last year over 2,000 participated in the annual demonstration at the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia to call for the closure of the military training school, which continues to instruct Latin American soldiers, as well as to demand an end to U.S.-led militarization in the Americas that continues to fuel violence and forced migration. SOA Watch maintains that for justice to prevail, the U.S. officials who are responsible for the training of repressive foreign militaries need to be held accountable as well.
SOA Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the US Army School of the Americas, under whatever name it is called, through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent protest, as well as media and legislative work.
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G20 Leaders Reach 'Landmark Commitment' for Global Tax on Ultrarich
"Now is the time to turn words into action and launch an inclusive international negotiation, extending beyond G20 countries, on the reform of the taxation of the superrich," said economist Gabriel Zucman.
Nov 19, 2024
Acknowledging that "the era of the billionaire" is still in full swing across the globe, economic justice advocates on Tuesday applauded a "landmark commitment" by G20 leaders at the group's annual summit in Rio de Janeiro, where delegates agreed to cooperate on efforts to ensure the richest households in the world are taxed fairly.
The final communiqué out of the G20 Summit includes a commitment from 19 countries, the European Union, and the African Union, to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed."
"Cooperation could involve exchanging best practices, encouraging debates around tax principles, and devising anti-avoidance mechanisms, including addressing potentially harmful tax practices," reads the communiqué. "We look forward to continuing to discuss these issues in the G20 and other relevant forums, counting on the technical inputs of relevant international organizations, academia, and experts."
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The meeting took place less than a year after economist Gabriel Zucman, director of the E.U. Tax Observatory, published a report titledA Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, which informed G20 finance discussions leading up to the summit.
"A minimum tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth would raise $200-$250 billion per year globally from about 3,000 taxpayers; extending the tax to centimillionaires would add $100-$140 billion," said Zucman, a leading expert on tax avoidance and reducing inequality, in the report.
Billionaires' effective tax rate is currently equivalent to 0.3% of their wealth, requiring them to pay a far lower rate than middle-class taxpayers.
Zucman hailed the agreement out of the summit in Rio de Janeiro as a "historic decision" and said concrete action by the world's governments must follow.
"Now is the time to turn words into action and launch an inclusive international negotiation, extending beyond G20 countries, on the reform of the taxation of the superrich," said Zucman.
Along with Milei, the Biden administration pushed back this year as the G20 weighed Zucman's tax proposal. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen toldThe Wall Street Journal in May that the "notion of some common global arrangement for taxing billionaires with proceeds redistributed in some way—we're not supportive of a process to try to achieve that. That's something we can't sign on to."
As Common Dreamsreported Tuesday, the U.S. is one of eight countries that are contributing to an international loss of $492 billion in taxes each year as multinational corporations and ultrawealthy individuals underpay. The eight countries—which also include Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the U.K.—oppose a United Nations tax convention.
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Viviana Santiago, executive director of Oxfam Brazil, applauded Lula's government and the G20 leaders for responding "to people's demands worldwide to tackle extreme inequality, hunger, and climate breakdown, and particularly for rallying action on taxing the superrich."
"G20 governments deserve praise for their groundbreaking commitment to cooperate on taxing the world's superrich. But we won't rest until this delivers real change for people and planet," said Santiago, adding that governments now ostensibly supporting a tax on billionaires' wealth should also "be championing a $5 trillion climate finance goal at COP29," the U.N. summit set to wrap up in Baku, Azerbaijan this week.
"How can they argue that climate justice is unaffordable with a deal to raise trillions of dollars by taxing the superrich on the table?" she asked.
Quentin Parrinello, policy director at the E.U. Tax Observatory, asserted that negotiations on the tax proposal "must now extend to a much more inclusive space than the G20."
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The analysis estimates that just eight countries—the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, Israel, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand—are enabling large-scale tax avoidance by opposing popular global reform efforts. Late last year, those same eight countries were the lonely opponents of the United Nations General Assembly's vote to set in motion the process of establishing a U.N. tax convention.
According to the new TJN study, those eight countries are responsible for roughly half of the $492 billion lost per year globally to tax avoidance by the rich and large multinational corporations, despite being home to just 8% of the world's population.
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"It's perhaps harder to understand why the other handful of blockers, like Australia, Canada, and Japan, who don't play anything like such a damaging role, would be willing to go along with this," Cobham added.
TJN released its study as G20 nations—a group that includes most of the "hurtful eight"—issued a communiqué pledging to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed." Brazil, which hosted the G20 summit, led the push for language calling for taxation of the global super-rich.
The document drew praise from advocacy groups including the Fight Inequality Alliance, which stressed the need to "transform the rhetoric on taxing the rich into global reality."
The communiqué was released amid concerns that the election of far-right billionaire Donald Trump in the U.S. could derail progress toward a global solution to pervasive and costly tax avoidance.
The new TJN study cites Trump's pledge to cut the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% and warns such a move would accelerate the global "race to the bottom" on corporate taxation.
"People in countries around the world are calling in large majorities on their governments to tax multinational corporations properly," Liz Nelson, TJN's director of advocacy and research, said Tuesday. "But governments continue to exercise a policy of appeasement on corporate tax."
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"Trump wants to strip healthcare from poor people and increase grocery bills."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) suggested to reporters last week that Republicans could aim to transform Medicaid's funding structure by instituting block grants—a change that analysts say would likely result in devastating cuts.
Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families, wrote Monday that under a block-grant structure, states would "either have to dramatically raise taxes and drastically cut other parts of their budget including K-12 education or, as is far more likely, institute deep, damaging cuts to Medicaid eligibility, benefits, and provider and plan payment rates."
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The Post reported that Republicans are also looking to curb SNAP benefits in the face of a nationwide hunger crisis. According to the latest federal data, 75% of households receiving SNAP benefits live at or below the poverty line and nearly 80% include either a child, an elderly person, or a person with a disability.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media Monday that members of her party "must unite and fight back" against the GOP's push for draconian cuts to SNAP and Medicaid.
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Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) added that "making it even more difficult for people to get healthcare or afford food in order to give tax cuts to the same greedy companies that are driving up healthcare and food costs is disgusting."
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