USC students protest the CIA
By
LOS ANGELES--When a University of Southern California (USC) marketing class organized a promotional campaign for CIA recruiters, student activists reacted in disgust and in protest.
On April 7, about a dozen students and community activists held signs reading "CIA off our campus" and passed out informational leaflets to passersby. Called by USC Anti-War Coalition, the protest was attended by members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the International Socialist Organization, ANSWER, World Can't Wait, and Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition.
Countering the marketing class' slogan, "Discover the CIA", protest organizers pitched their own facts about the CIA under the same banner. Organizer Gary Yeritsian, a senior at USC, drafted the informational pamphlet, which listed a number of atrocities perpetrated by the CIA, including torture and rendition. The handout quoted a number of sources, including the Human Rights Watch "Statement on U.S. Rendition Legislation":
The...practice of so-called "extraordinary rendition" is an affront to the fundamental human right not to be subjected to torture. This prohibition is absolute. Just as governments cannot torture people, they cannot send people to countries where they are likely to be tortured. Rendition to torture is the legal and moral equivalent of engaging in torture directly...
[P]erhaps the best example is that of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin. In 2002, he was seized by U.S. authorities while transiting New York and sent to Syria, where he endured nearly a year of brutal treatment, including beatings with electrical cords.
CIA torture survivor Maria Guardado also joined the protest. In 1980, she was kidnapped, raped and beaten in El Salvador for her involvement with the leftist political movement, the FMLN. Asked repeatedly for her comrades' names and addresses by a man with an Anglo accent, she refused. She was left for dead on the side of the road by suspected CIA thugs.
Guardado told SocialistWorker.org through a translator that she would like to see a Los Angeles-wide student-based committee dedicated to bringing the CIA to justice for such crimes. Campuses are one of the few places where the CIA openly recruits. "The CIA is currently re-branding itself in an effort to seem more innocuous, less nationalistic, and more racially pluralistic," said Elizabeth Venable, a graduate student who helped organize the event. "However, we know that the actions of the CIA--overthrowing democracies, torture, rendition--contradict these messages."
SJP members Alex Shams and Shahrzad Ghadjar both infiltrated the CIA event to get a closer look at how recruiters pitch the company. According to Ghadjar, some signs were in Farsi and Mandarin. When they mentioned to the recruiter that they both speak Farsi, they were told they could "help your President [Obama]" by recruiting Iranian spies. "I was insulted," said Ghadjar.
Students are considering a film screening--possibly a documentary about Maria Guardado's experience--to follow up the effort to educate the campus about CIA torture. Participants also realize they probably haven't seen the last of the CIA on campus and will need to keep organizing.
For more information a Maria Guardado's story, visit her Web site. Visit the facebook group for the USC Anti-War Coalition Web site for information about upcoming actions of to get involved.
