We Stand With Shaker: Send Us Your Photos In Solidarity with Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in Guantánamo

Please like and share “We Stand With Shaker” on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and send us your photos holding a sign reading “I Stand With Shaker” now!

On Sunday I announced the launch of “We Stand With Shaker,” a new campaign to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and his return to his family — his British wife and four British children — in south London. Shamefully, for both the US and the UK governments, Shaker is still held despite being approved for release under President Bush in 2007, and under President Obama in 2009. This is an intolerable situation, and every day that he remains held ought to be a source of profound shame for the UK and US governments.

The “We Stand With Shaker” campaign will be officially launched on Monday November 24, the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s capture, at 12.30pm, in Old Palace Yard opposite the House of Parliament (by the statue of King George V), when some of the campaign’s high-profile supporters — including lawyers, politicians, journalists and comedians — will stand with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer, the centrepiece of the campaign, and the “elephant in the room” when it comes to the UK’s dealings with the US, and will call for his immediate release.

Tomorrow we will be issuing a press release providing full details about the launch, and on Monday our website will go live. As well as featuring photos of celebrities standing with the inflatable figure of Shaker, the website will also feature a promotional video for the campaign, focused on my band The Four Fathers performing “Song for Shaker Aamer,” the campaign song that I wrote.

Another key aspect of the campaign involves you — supporters from all around the world, including the UK — expressing solidarity with Shaker by taking photos of yourselves with hand-made signs that read “I Stand With Shaker” — or “We Stand With Shaker” if there are more than one of you, or indeed any other message you think is appropriate, and sending the photos to us. Please also feel free to include a message with your photo, and, if you wish, to tell us a little about yourself. We’ll put all the photos on the website when it launches on Monday, and we’ll make some available on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

I look forward to seeing you standing with Shaker and holding up a placard showing your support.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.