UNITED STATES: Activist sentenced to jail

On January 27, in Columbus, Georgia, Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness and three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was sentenced to three months in federal prison. A member of Voices in the Wilderness, Kelly has been committed to non-violent resistance for decades.

Kelly's "crime" was to cross onto the property of the Fort Benning military base in November. She was protesting against the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Insititute for Security Cooperation. The SOA has trained many of the military dictators and soldiers responsible for the massacres of thousands of people in central and South America. It has been the target of annual protests for the last 14 years.

Kelly was hogtied during her arrest, after refusing to submit to every instruction during an aggressive body search. Her action was taken in solidarity with 10 other walkers. Friar Jerry Zawada, an Iraq Peace Team member, was sentenced to six months in federal prison (he was also convicted of trespassing at the SOA in 2002), Faith Fippinger, a former human shield in Iraq, was sentenced to three months in prison, and Scott Diehl was also sentenced to three months in prison.

[For more information, visit SOA Watch at <http://www.soaw.org> or Voices in the Wilderness at <http://www.vitw.org>.]

From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 570