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Episcopal Church Volunteer Reports on Deliberate Campaign of Terror Against Churches in El Salvador

Episcopal News Service. December 8, 1989 [89248]

"The situation right now is one of total terror for anyone who works in the churches in El Salvador," said Josephine Beecher, an Episcopal Church worker who was arrested by the Salvadoran National Guard and later released. At a press conference held on November 29 in New York, Beecher said that El Salvador is now gripped by "a climate of fear."

Beecher, a Seattle native who has been working as a Volunteer in Mission, was seized in a predawn raid on November 20 at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in San Salvador, a parish of the Episcopal Church. Hundreds of Salvadorans seeking refuge from the recently intensified civil war were being sheltered on the church grounds. The Episcopal Church and other churches who have been working with the poor have become targets of harassment and intimidation, according to Beecher. "Because the Episcopal Church is small, it is particularly vulnerable," she said. "They [the military] are trying to destroy the Episcopal Church in El Salvador" by depriving the church of leadership during this critical time.

Intimidation of the churches escalated in early November and attracted worldwide attention with the brutal murder of six Jesuit priests and two women on November 16. In recent weeks, church workers from the Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, and Brethren churches have been detained and threatened, provoking international outcries.

While she was in detention, Beecher was blindfolded, handcuffed, and beaten on the head. "They [her captors] said they were going to set up the electric shock machine, and then they ran a sharp object across my throat with the words, 'This is what's going tohappen to you.' They accused me of being a 'delinquent terrorist' and helping to plan the current offensive," she said. "But I am in El Salvador to work with those committed to a peaceful alternative to the violence."

A U.S. consulate official was present during her interrogation, "sipping coffee with the [Salvadoran] colonel." After her release, Beecher was advised by a U.S. official to sign a document that said she had not been physically or mentally mistreated. "At the time I was pretty shaken up, and I was not able to make any kind of stand." When Beecher talked to U.S. consulate officials on Monday to report of her experience, they told her that she had "received normal treatment for a prisoner of war."

Beecher said the situation is so polarized in El Salvador that anyone working with the poor is regarded as subversive but added that the church is only trying to create a "middle ground" for those committed to negotiation and peaceful alternatives. She warned that without the church's moderating influence "we are left with two violent options," the guerrillas on the left and the government on the right.

"The U.S. government should not be funding the atrocities and murders in El Salvador," Beecher contended. She was particularly critical of the U.S. government's close association with the government and the military of El Salvador and expressed appreciation for church efforts to challenge current U.S. policy.

Church leaders outraged at persecution of churches

Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, who was with Beecher at the press conference on November 29, expressed appreciation for the way Beecher represented "the symbolic and sacramental hopes and aspirations, frustrations and fears of the many people she has served over the years." Echoing her criticism of the U.S. role in El Salvador, Browning announced an attempt by American religious leaders to meet with the President and congressional leaders to express their outrage at the persecution of the church. At the press conference, he released a new statement by Protestant and Roman Catholic church leaders that expressed "outrage over the deliberate and calculated campaign by government forces in El Salvador to intimidate and harass the churches in that country."

Expressing concern for the safety of those church workers still detained, the statement said that the U.S. government action "has not been sufficient to bring about any significant change in the behavior of the Salvadoran government." The statement called attempts to divert action from the crisis "unacceptable." (STATEMENT ATTACHED)

Browning also announced his intention to send a delegation of four Episcopal bishops to El Salvador immediately to seek release of all detained church workers. Included in the delegation are Bishop William Frey of Colorado, Bishop William Swing of California, Bishop David Reed of Kentucky, and Bishop James Ottley of Panama, who is currently administering the Diocese of El Salvador. (As we go to press, the bishops have received their visas and plan to leave for San Salvador on December 5.)

Browning emphasized the Episcopal Church's solidarity with the churches in E1 Salvador and promised continuing pressure on both the U.S. and Salvadoran governments to release the detainees and "move toward a more realistic policy in the area." Browning has taken the lead in calling for "a reassessment of our government's policy in Latin America from top to bottom," charging that the broader U.S. policy in Latin America "is an immoral situation as it now stands."

Ecumenical protest in Washington, DC

Episcopalian, Lutheran, and American Baptist leaders in Washington, DC, issued a joint statement on November 30 stating that "those who help the poor are being targeted with death threats and treated as enemies of the government."

Episcopal Bishop Ronald Haines voiced "grave concern over the official U.S. support of a government whose activities have intimidated innocent people and brought death."

In addition to Haines, the statement was signed by Bishop Harold Jansen of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Rev. Victor Mercado of the American Baptist Churches. The three leaders said that their denominations have begun organizing a nationwide campaign to bring the situation in El Salvador to the attention of church members.

There are signs that local jurisdictions are responding to the issue. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, for example, passed a resolution at its recent convention stating that it was in "solidarity with the churches of El Salvador in their work to bring relief and comfort to the recent victims of war in that country." The resolution called on the President and Congress "to reorder their priorities to bring an end to the armed conflict."

Bishop of Michigan participates in protest

"After mourning, we must look to the living, many of whom are church people still suffering at the hands of the Salvadoran military," Bishop H. Coleman McGehee, Jr., said at a memorial service for church leaders who have been killed in that country's civil war. He mentioned especially the six Jesuit priests and two women who were killed recently, as well as Archbishop Oscar Romero and "the other 70,000 who have been killed since the beginning of this conflict."

"One of the most striking cases is that of Jennifer Casolo, a U.S. citizen working for an ecumenical organization, Christian Education Seminars, as a guide for visiting church groups and congressional delegations to El Salvador," the bishop continued in his address to a crowd of about 500 protesters who marched from the Roman Catholic cathedral to the federal building in downtown Detroit.

The bishop recounted the story of how Casolo had been arrested [and since that time charged] with terrorism when a cache of arms was discovered buried in the back yard of a house that she had recently recented McGehee expressed disappointment that American officials "accepted the idea without question that Jennifer was smuggling weapons to the rebels." He drew a parallel between the Casolo arrest and the arrest and detention of Episcopal church worker Josephine Beecher.

"Why are things like this happening to church people," the bishop asked. "The only explanation is that our government's commitment to the Cristiani ARENA regime is stronger than its commitment to justice or even to the safety of American citizens. The work of church people to promote understanding and reconciliation is an embarrassment to our government that has decided to seek a military solution," he continued. "The policy of propping up the Salvadoran government in the expectation of a military victory is a bankrupt policy," he concluded. Arguing that the United States must share responsibility for the actions of the Salvadoran government, McGehee said, "We cannot dissociate ourselves from what is happening. We are involved in torturing, beating, bombing, threatening, and killing -- all for a cold-war ideology that is waning elsewhere and never did apply to Central America."

Bishop McGehee called on Congress to "be gutsy enough" to cut off military aid to El Salvador and seek a negotiated settlement to the conflict. "The American people cannot be in the position of propping up a government that kills its people with our bombs and bullets and labels Christian charity as subversive," he said.

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