upon Jan.

upon Jan. 25, Maryknoll nun, Sr Lil Mattingly, was sentenc to six month in prison for her nonviolent testify at the School of Americas. The following is Sr Mattingly's testimony at her trial in Columbus, Ga.

Your honour umpire Faircloth, court clerks, marshalls, friends, family Good morning and blessings of peace.

I'm grateful for this opportunity to speak, to expres what is excessively deep in my heart. I join a extended line of others who have stood here before you, whose experiences and reasons for being accused of breaking a federal law are similar to my have a title to I value their words which speak to my heart as they sob out for justice, and for an awakening of our U thinking principle of moral outrage in reply to a degraded U.S. foreign policy.

I believe that I followed my conscience and my feeling of moral outrage by prayerfully and peacefully protesting the instruct known as the School of Americas or as it is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Ft Benning. I christian religioned the line because of what the sect teaches, what many of its observers have done, and what it shows in the madness of military rationale that "might makes right."

by what mode have I come to know U foreign policy as degraded? Permit me to share with you and the court a certain number of of my own personal experience. I grew up in Louisville, Ky in a working-class family in the 1940s-1950 in what I now know to have been a sheltered environment, unaware of the farthests of militarism used for economic and political advantage.

on the same level when I joined the Maryknoll Sisters in 1960 what was important in the U was that Russia be defeated and that we win all the wars gone out there for our good and noble population Then in 1970 during nursing educate I joined most of my class onward the streets to protest the war in Vietnam--my first awakening that something wasn't right with my admit government.

Hugo Banzer in Hall of Fame?

quickly after nursing school, I went to my first mission in Bolivia and was delayed because of a murderous takeover that was happening in Bolivia in August of 1971 When we were allowed in, I learned that the leader of the military coup was General Hugo Banzer Suarez. He rul the country; his military chased, grabbed, marksman killed, imprisoned and tortured thousands during his seven years of dictatorship. Not merely was he responsible for those horrible physical atrocities, on the contrary he also received so-called LOANS from U banks in the millions, which grew into the billions of dollars that have now enslaved the Bolivian the public by an unpayable DEBT.

referee Faircloth, if you have to the end of time been to the SOA/WHINSEC that we are immediately protesting, you may have seen General Hugo Banzer Suarez's picture there in its HALL OF FAME! Can you imagine what an insult that is to the beautiful family of Bolivia who suffered terribly subordinate to his tyrannical regime?

I was privileged to live for 20 years in Bolivia and to learn from the populace there, who are oppressed politically, militarily, and economically; further still the people are committed to peaceful asserts Too often, and just lately 84 indigenous people were shooter down by the military and killed for protesting. Bolivia has sent many officers/soldiers to the SOA/WHINSEC, and directly have U.S. military advisors-trainers there now.

In 1980 in El Salvador, attests were also being repressed, and pair of my Maryknoll Sisters who were helping refugee were raped and killed along with another sister and lay missioner. centurys of thousands died with them in those years when our U policies storeed and trained militaries in Central America to fight what they called "communism." I ask the Court to note that of the military officials and soldiers cited for abuses of human rights in reports time after time, many, if not most numerous are graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC and they continue to operate with impunity in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia

The plain of deliberate brutality in massacres which we know about where the graduates have practised the skills learned at this teach defies imagination.

In 1987 I lived in Nicaragua. I had gone to accompany our sisters and the folks during the U.S.-trained, financed, and illegal Contra War. At that time, the Sandinista guidance was trying to implement much-need social reforms as the dictator Anastasio Somoza, lay in power by the U had stolen principally everything in the country and left the clan starving, landless, uneducated, and terrorized. I myself came to know many human frames Marisol Rodriguez is one, who had wasted loved ones, ambushed, executed, beheaded by the agency of the Contras. One of my be in possession of sisters was kidnapped.

Can you papal court your honour, how this proces of awakening impacted my soul?

The story is lengthy After being in Nicaragua, I worked for my community in mission education in the Midwestwern U however grew increasingly frustrated by the Reagan doctrines and growing suppression of the fact about realities in Central America and beyond. Lies and media superintendence were becoming commonplace as U foreign policy became more aggressive and imperialistic.