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his Nov. 22-24, thousands of people from across the United States and Latin America will converge upon Fort Benning in Georgia, USA, to demand the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).

In what has become an annual ritual for more than 20 years, activists will employ civil disobedience in attempts to enter the SOA, facing arrest rather than accept the continued injustices embodied by the institute.

The activists have good reason to protest. The military institute is notorious for training over 64,000 foreign soldiers in subjects such as counterinsurgency, military intelligence, interrogations and psychological warfare. Many of the military officials responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in Latin America were trained there, and some have even served as guest instructors.

Since 2004, six Latin American countries have now pulled out of the school, and each year opponents come closer to finally closing the school down. Over the years, the US has provided similar training to Indonesia. The US government was a chief backer of the New Order regime and supplied the Indonesian military with the intelligence, equipment and training used for some of the worst human rights atrocities of the last century.

Indonesian military officers among the graduates of Fort Benning are Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto, who was allegedly behind atrocities in Timor Leste and the kidnapping of democracy activists in 1998. Other Indonesians trained in the US include Lt. Gen. (ret) Sjafrie Sjamsuddin and Lt. Gen. (ret) Johny Lumintang, both reportedly linked to the violence around the 1999 referendum in Timor Leste.

Following the Nov. 12, 1991 Santa Cruz Massacre in East Timor, citizens pushed the US Congress to restrict military training and other assistance to the Indonesian military. While Congress banned IMET, the main program that brought Indonesian officers to the US for training, the Pentagon quietly continued to train soldiers in surveillance, psychological operations and other tactics to be used against civilian populations under other programs.

Grassroots pressure forced the US to take very minor steps towards addressing the atrocities of the Pentagon'€™s Indonesian students: Prabowo is currently barred from travel to the US and Lumintang was found liable of gross human rights violations and ordered to pay US$66 million to Timorese victims by a US District Court (the verdict was later overturned on a technicality).

Inside Indonesia impunity continues to reign supreme: despite some modest gains in reforming the military over the past decade, regular human rights violations continue in Papua and elsewhere, and the US-created Detachment 88 reportedly kills suspected terrorists at will.

Past crimes continue to go unpunished, with those believed to be responsible enjoying prominent positions: Prabowo has formed his own political party and is a leading contender for president, Sjafrie is a deputy minister at the Defense Ministry and Lumintang is set to be the next ambassador to the Philippines. Gen. Wiranto, indicted in Timor for his role as military commander in 1999, is also planning a presidential run.

It is clear that the Pentagon has also failed to absorb the lessons of the past. With the State Department as a willing ally, human rights conditions on US military training and other assistance to Indonesian security forces have been systematically dismantled.

Despite its rights rhetoric, the Obama administration, like its predecessors, has made engagement with Indonesia'€™s security forces a priority. This is what makes actions like the annual mobilization against the SOA so important.

The writer is with the NGO Focus on the Global South.