CIA recruiting at Virginia Tech

For the second time this year, the Central Intelligence Agency will be coming to Virginia Tech to recruit students. And for the second time this year, they will be met with protests from students who view the CIA as an immoral organization that engages in torture and murder.

Nicholas Kiersey organized a protest last spring when the CIA came to campus. He released the following statement Monday about the CIA’s trip to Torgeson 3100 Thursday at 7 p.m.:

“Blacksburg, VA November 13, 2005 - A coalition of concerned graduate students and campus organizations at Virginia Tech are this Thursday staging a ‘teach in’ to protest CIA recruitment on campus. Planned events also include the protest of a ‘career information’ session to be held by the CIA later that evening.

On November 2nd, 2005 the Washington Post published an article entitled “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons”. The article reported that the CIA has set up a covert network of secret prisons and interrogation centers, known as “black sites”, in several countries around the world, including several democracies in Eastern Europe and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Prisoners at these facilities are held indefinitely and often in isolation, without due process of the law. Moreover, CIA interrogators working at these sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. Among the tactics approved for use are “waterboarding”, intended to induce in prisoners the idea that they are drowning.

While intelligence officials defend the unrestricted operation of these sites as necessary for the successful defense of the country, it should be noted that both the sites and the suspected practices carried out at them would be illegal if operated within the USA, which is a signatory to the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Importantly, the same is true for the democratic host states in Eastern Europe where some of these sites are located.

The ‘Teach In’ will take place on Thursday, Nov. 17, 5-6.30pm, in Torgerson 3100. The event will feature talks by Virginia Tech instructors and the presentation of a draft letter to President Steger’s office, signed by a number of concerned Virginia Tech faculty and students.

The letter will request that Virginia Tech place a moratorium on all CIA activities on Virginia Tech’s campus until such time as a thorough and independent investigation certifies that the organization has been thoroughly reformed and no longer engages in practices that contravene international law and basic standards of human rights.

The CIA’s scheduled ‘career information’ session will take place at 7pm in the same location.

Sponsoring campus organizations include: The International Club and Amnesty International at Virginia Tech.”

http://blogs.roanoke.com/campuswatch/archives/cia_recruiting.html

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