War objector comes to Dorchester

Yawu Miller

It wasn’t until Camilo Mejia came home from the war on leave that he began to question his conduct in Iraq.

There were the 33 people his unit killed, only three of whom were armed. There was also the psychological torture of the detainees his unit guarded — men who were forced to wear hoods and stay awake for days on end.

“I had started telling myself the same things all soldiers tell themselves to justify their actions,” he said, during a visit to Dorchester. “Military indoctrination and a sense of comraderie weigh heavily on you.”

But away from the firefights and his fellow soldiers, Mejia says his conscience began to weigh on him even more.

“At the end of the day, we still don’t belong in Iraq. We’re raping the country. We were human beings before we came to this country and we’ll be human beings when we come back.”

With trepidation, Mejia became a conscientious objector to the war, and embarked on a five-month speaking tour, turning out at anti-war demonstrations and press conferences. Then, in June 2004, he turned himself in to military authorities and was tried and sentenced to 12 months for desertion.

Speaking at a gathering of Dorchester People for Peace, Mejia told an audience of more than 100 people that serving time in a military prison was easier than making up his mind not to return to the war.

“I didn’t feel alone when I was in jail because I felt like I was connected to people like you,” he said. “I felt free the entire time.”

Mejia, who spent much of his childhood in Nicaragua, was born to a Costa Rican mother who served as a logistical coordinator for the Sandinista army’s rebellion against the brutal Somosa dictatorship. After the Sandinista government was defeated by the candidacy of Violetta Chamorro, Mejia’s mother moved to Miami.

There, Mejia found himself struggling to put himself through high school, working for minimum wage at a Burger King while attending night classes.

Mejia says the Army’s promise of a free ride in college helped inform his decision to enlist in 1994. After completing his military service, he began attending a community college and remained enrolled in the Florida National Guard, hoping to maximize his benefits.

With just one month of service left in his guard duty, Mejia’s unit was re-activated and sent to Iraq. While he felt that the war against Iraq was wrong, Mejia says he was afraid of breaking the U.S. military’s code of loyalty.

His unit’s first assignment was guarding what his superiors called a detention facility.

“The first thing they said was don’t call it a prisoner of war camp,” Mejia said, noting that there were no medical facilities or medical professionals on the grounds, as required by international treaties.

“They told us to call it a detention facility.”

It was there that Mejia and his fellow platoon mates were instructed to keep the prisoners awake by three superior officers who, in Army parlance, were called “spooks.”

“They did not go by their real names,” Mejia said. “They called themselves Rabbit, Bear and Scooter. These people were in charge. But if anything happened, they’d be off the hook. They were un-traceable.”

The prisoners were kept in an aircraft bunker and surrounded by concertina wire, kept barefoot, hooded and awake at all times. Prisoners who attempted to sleep were kept awake by the soldiers who yelled at them and occasionally held guns to their heads under the sand bags that were used as hoods.

In Al Ramadi, where his unit spent much of its time, he says he and his colleagues were forced onto dangerous patrols, spurred on by commanding officers hell-bent on earning medals for combat.

Although no one in his unit died, more than a few were wounded.

“We had people who lost limbs,” he said. “We had people who ended up in psychiatric wards.”

One soldier in his unit who took a piece of shrapnel in his head could not recognize his own family when he returned home, Mejia said.

Mejia spent much of his stay in the Boston area speaking to students at local schools, urging them not to enroll in the military.

Locally, Dorchester People for Peace has helped spur an information campaign that helped prompt 3,700 Boston high school students to request that school officials not give their contact information to military recruiters, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act.