Archive for January, 2020
Video: “Guantánamo in 2020: What is the Future of the Prison Camp after Eighteen Years?” at New America, Jan. 13, 2020
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Today I’m delighted to be posting, via YouTube, the hour-long video of a panel discussion and Q&A session about the prison at Guantánamo Bay — and the need to close it — which I took part in at the New America think-tank in Washington, D.C. on January 13, two days after the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison.
Also taking part was the attorney Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012. Tom was Counsel of Record for the Guantánamo prisoners as they successfully sought habeas corpus rights before the Supreme Court in 2004 and 2008 — although those rights have since been gutted by ideologically malignant appeals court rulings — and we are grateful to New America for hosting a panel discussion about Guantánamo with us every year on or around the anniversary. The moderator for this year’s anniversary event was Melissa Salyk-Virk, Senior Policy Analyst in New America’s International Security Program.
As I hope readers have realized via my various articles about the anniversary, and my ten-day US visit to call for the prison’s closure — this year there was a real urgency, indignation and passion to the calls for the prison’s closure and of the need for urgent change in the political leadership in the US expressed by myself and other campaigners.
Radio: Unauthorized Disclosure – I Discuss Guantánamo and Julian Assange with Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek
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My thanks to Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek for interviewing me for 40 minutes on Friday for their “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast, which was made available on Sunday. As the dust settled on my return to the UK from a ten-day trip to the US to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, it was a good opportunity to reflect on what I had done and what I had learned during my trip, as well as providing enough time for me to explain some crucial aspects of the prison’s long and unjust history in depth.
As I explained when I posted a link to the show on Facebook, it is crucially important for people to remember that “the remaining 40 prisoners — and especially the three-quarters of them who are held indefinitely without charge or trial — are ‘entombed’ in the prison by Donald Trump, who has no intention of releasing any of them under any circumstances, and against whom no mechanism exists to oblige him to do anything that he doesn’t want.”
As I explained during the show, “Whoever has control of Guantánamo can do what they want with it,” and as I also explained, under Trump “the prison is sealed shut, entombing the men remaining in this pointless and cruel facility which defies American values, where the prisoners for the most part are held without charge or trial, and where they’re warehoused awaiting death, whenever that may come — 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.”
Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo on the Project Censored Show with Mickey Huff, on WBAI in New York, and with Michael Slate in L.A.
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I’m now back in the UK after an inspiring ten-day visit to the US to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on the 18th anniversary of its opening, when I took part in a prominent rally in Washington, D.C. on the actual anniversary (January 11), two subsequent speaking events with lawyers representing prisoners, one TV interview (the sole TV feature marking the anniversary in the whole of the US broadcast media) and six radio interviews.
My visit was important, I think, because, although Guantánamo ought to be a source of permanent shame for all decent Americans, it has fallen so far off the radar under Donald Trump that many people don’t even know that it exists, and many of those who do don’t care, even though the continued existence of the prison, where the US government holds foreign Muslims without charge or trial, and, in many cases, with no genuine effort made over 18 years to establish who they are, is like a virus infecting America’s soul.
Although few people care, my efforts to remind people of the prison’s existence, and my shared events with lawyers who still visit prisoners (and particularly Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, who carries the weight of their horrendous isolation and despair under Donald Trump), was easily enough to persuade me that, despite America’s amnesia, this work is still of extraordinary importance.
Video: Attorney Shelby Sullivan-Bennis and I Bring the Sorrow, Injustice and Cruelty of Guantánamo to Life at Revolution Books in New York
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I’m just back in the UK after a ten-day trip to the US to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay that has, I think, been as constructive as anyone could have expected. I took part in a prominent rally in Washington, D.C., two speaking events with lawyers representing prisoners, one TV interview and six radio interviews.
The rally (video here) was outside the White House on January 11, the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison, where I spoke as a representative of the Close Guantánamo campaign, which I established with the attorney Tom Wilner eight years ago, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison. The rally also involved representatives of numerous other groups that remain concerned about the existence of Guantánamo, including Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Witness Against Torture, whose members fast and stage actions in the run-up to the anniversary, and who, in their orange jumpsuits and hoods, provide a suitably grim theatrical backdrop to the occasion.
On Monday January 13, Tom Wilner and I spoke at the New America think-tank, a well-attended event for which, I hope, a video will be available soon. I then returned to New York, where I was interviewed by RT in a seven-minute feature that, shockingly, constituted the sole focus on the Guantánamo anniversary in the whole of the US broadcast media, and I then took part in my second speaking event, at Revolution Books in Harlem, which I’m posting below.
Reporting from the US, Including My Photos of the Close Guantánamo Rally Outside the White House, Jan. 11, 2020
See my photos of the rally on Flickr here.
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
It’s now five days since a sad occasion that I traveled to the US from the UK to mark — and to rail against: the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, on January 11, when I took part in a rally outside the White House organized by numerous rights groups, including Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Witness Against Torture.
This was the tenth year in a row that I’ve traveled to the US to mark the anniversary, and I’m still here, about to take part in a speaking event at Revolution Books in Harlem this evening, and also taking part in numerous media interviews — for the Scott Horton Show, and with Sunsara Taylor on her show “We Only Want the World” on WBAI in New York. Yesterday, I was interviewed on RT America (video posted below), today I’m speaking with Paul DiRienzo on WBAI and with Mickey Duff for “Project Censored” on KPFA, Pacifica Radio in Berkeley — and tomorrow I’ll be speaking with Latif Nasser on WNYC, New York Public Radio, and on the Michael Slate Show in Los Angeles. Do get in touch if you’d like to be added to this list!
Here’s that RT America video, which represents, I believe, the sole focus on Guantánamo, on the 18th anniversary of its opening, in the whole of the US-based broadcast media:
Video: Calling for the Closure of Guantánamo Outside the White House on the 18th Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration, including my current visit to the US to call for the prison’s closure. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and, for the tenth year running, I was in Washington, D.C., calling for its closure.
I was there as a representative of Close Guantánamo, an organization I established eight years ago — on the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo — with the attorney Tom Wilner, and I was delighted to be part of a line-up of speakers that included representatives of numerous other campaigning groups and lawyers’ organizations — Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Justice for Muslims Collective, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Witness Against Torture, to name just a few, as well as some other individuals playing music and performing spoken word pieces.
The video is posted below, via the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Facebook page, and I hope that you have time to watch it in its entirety. If you want to see what happened when I distilled a year’s worth of rage and indignation at Guantánamo’s continued existence into four minutes, my speech begins around 55 minutes in.
My US Visit to Call for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 18th Anniversary of Its Opening, Jan. 10-20, 2020
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration, including my imminent visit to the US. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
On Friday I fly into New York’s JFK Airport from London for what will be my tenth successive January visit to the US to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on the anniversary of its opening.
The main focus of my visits, from that first year onwards, has been a rally outside the White House of groups calling for the prison’s closure, including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Witness Against Torture, and the World Can’t Wait. and, most years, I have also taken part in a panel discussion about the future of Guantánamo at New America, a D.C.-based think-tank. For more, check out the archive for my visits in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Even that first year (2011), the rally was an example of tenacity over hope, and it remains so today, something that has to be done, because the existence of Guantánamo is an abomination, but, sadly, with no expectation that it will fundamentally change anything.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
