US Priest Awarded Prestigious Human Rights Prize

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commondreams.org/news2005/0901-04.htm

WASHINGTON - September 1 - Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch), was awarded the 18th annual esteemed Aachen Peace Prize in Aachen, Germany today. The Peace Prize Committee consists of 400 members under the umbrella of two Catholic organizations and includes local Catholic and Protestant church communities, the City of Aachen, and local civic organizations. Fr. Bourgeois accepted the award on behalf of his work to close the controversial U.S. Army’s School of the Americas.

Past recipients include U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, the Israeli organization Gush Shalom, Kazuo Soda, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, and Peace Brigades International. This year Fr. Bourgeois shares the award with German actress Hanne Hiob, daughter of Bertolt Brechts and a longtime voice against war and fascism. Begun in 1988, the Aachen Peace Award Committee consists of 400 members under the umbrella of two Catholic organizations and includes local Catholic and Protestant church communities, the City of Aachen, and local civic organizations.

Fr. Bourgeois was chosen to receive the international award because he “.has been actively working on the grassroots level and under great personal sacrifice for peace and human rights for decades,” focused for the last 15 years on closing a school linked to human rights abuses.
 
You can read more about Father Bourgeois at aachener-friedenspreis.de/english/2005/bourgeois.html

Highlights of his career include-

1963-1967: he served as a marine officer in Vietnam and was ordained the purple heart for being left wounded. After his military service he joined the Maryknoll missionary order
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                                                         1972: Roy Bourgeois was ordained a catholic priest

                                                         After which he went to Bolivia for five years in order to work with the poor. Under the General Hugo Banzer dicatatorship he was taken into custody and deported. 

                                                         When four nuns of the Maryknoll order were murdered by soldiers in El Savador in 1980 – two of whom he knew well – Roy Bourgeois became a critic of the US foreign policy in Latin America.
1990: Roy Bourgeois founded the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), a organization that researches the activites of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning. This military training site was renamed into Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The School of the Americas understands itself as a grass root movement and is committed to being violence free.
 
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also fixed link
 
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