Heckler & Koch USA and Fort Benning

Heckler & Koch

In the past decades at least 1.5 million people have been murdered by weapons developed by Heckler & Koch. Daily, soldiers and guerilla units are murdering in Sudan, the land of hunger, in Turkey, Somalia, Mexico, Iran, Iraq and in many other areas of crisis and war with the G3 assault rifle developed by Heckler & Koch in Oberndorf, Germany.

Today one person dies every 14 minutes due to a H&K weapon in the hands of private soldiers, paramilitary and military groups as well as child soldiers. Those responsible are the business leaders of H&K as well as the German government, who have made mass murder with H&K weapons possible by means of direct export or the granting of production licenses. Due to the recently developed generation of highly precise small weapons and the easy export conditions of the German government, we must fear that H&K will become the leading rifle firm worldwide. (Juergen Graesslin, Speaker of the German Peace Society - United Conscientious Objectors and the German Action Network to stop Small Arms)

Heckler & Koch USA

The new Heckler & Koch company in Columbus, Georgia will eventually employ up to 600 people. Contacts with the US have existed since 1975 in Sterling, Virginia where the new XM8 was designed. The new H&K plant occupies 10 hectars in Muscogee Technology Park. The USP40 compact pistol and the MP5 for SWAT and the US, Spanish and German military will be produced there. The USP40 compact pistol is funded by the US Transportation Security Administration.

The company will cover 4500 square meters and will employ 200 workers at the beginning. It is the first H&K company to be built outside of Germany. 300 000 Dollars in funding are to be provided by the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism. Additional funding comes from Georgia's Quick Start Program and the Columbus Development Agency.

The instruction of the employees will take place at the Columbus Technical College.

The proximity of Fort Benning (16 km) was decisive in making the decision about the location of the plant. The XM8 will replace the M4A1 and the M16A2 now used by the American army. H&K is producing 200 XM8 systems in Germany already - the weapons are similar to the G36 and are especially durable in dusty and sandy areas. As stated in a paper published at Fort Benning in 1986, the US Army now needs a system which improves target-hitting by shooting warheads which explode and fragment, as well as shooting single bullets ("Small Arms Paper", www.encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/XM-29 ). These are the criteria which the XM8 system meets.

Fort Benning will be the testing ground for the XM8 in the fall of 2004. This is the largest school for infantry in the USA.

By 2006 there may be 2000 weapons already produced.

The company broke ground in February 2004 and will begin production by the end of the year. ( www.conway.com/ssinsider/pwatch/pw030915.htm )

WHINSEC at Fort Benning

Located at Fort Benning in Building 35 (Ridgeway Hall or Old Infantry School) is the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, previously the School of the Americas (SOA). Military people educated by the School of the Americas have been made responsible for a number of atrocities in Latin

America including the murder of 4 churchwomen in El Salvador in December 1980, the massacre of 130 children under the age of 10 in 1981, the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980 and the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in November 1989. The School of the Americas instructs its students in the use of blackmail, murder and torture. In Colombia 125 military people who graduated from the SOA have been cited for human rights violations. After the uprising against the military in Chiapas in 1994, the Mexican army sent men to be educated at the SOA.

In 1990 hunger strikes were held at the gate of Fort Benning to protest the activities of the SOA. By 1998 there were 7000 protesters among which 2000 risked arrest and a 5000 Dollar fine by crossing onto the grounds of Fort Benning. During a march on the Pentagon against the SOA in 1999, sixty people were arrested. A total of 30 years imprisonment have been served by people who protested against the SOA. (Video: SOA: Guns and Greed, Maryknoll World Productions).

The next demonstration at Fort Benning will take place from November 19-21, 2004. ( www.soaw.org )

H&K and Latin America

The "Fabrica Nacional de Armas" in Mexico has produced H&K G3 rifles since 1980 for the Mexican army. The G3 has also been distributed in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, Haiti and Peru (Jane's Infantry Weapons 1995-96). For further information on the sale of small weapons to Latin America see: