Photos and Report: The Inspiring Close Guantánamo March and Rally in London, Jan. 14, 2023

19.1.23

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Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network in Parliament Square on January 14, 2023, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo (Photo: Andy Worthington).

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On Saturday (January 14), the UK Guantánamo Network held a powerful and inspiring march and vigil for the closure of Guantánamo in central London.

The UK Guantánamo Network, formed in 2021, comprises representatives of various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, the London Guantánamo Campaign and Freedom From Torture, and under the inspiring leadership of Convenor Sara Birch (of Lewes Amnesty Group), representatives of at least seven Amnesty groups (Lewes, the Kent Network, Reading, Blackheath and Greenwich, Ealing, Brighton and Hillington) turned up, as well as myself, representing Close Guantánamo, members of the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, and supporters of Julian Assange, whose extradition case is intimately tied in with Guantánamo, as it involves charges relating to the classified military files from the prison that were released by WikiLeaks in 2011, and on which I worked as a media partner.

We gathered in Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament at 11.30am, dressing up in orange jumpsuits and hoods, and then, holding placards calling for the closure of the prison and photos of the 35 men still held, we marched in single file, and in silence, up Whitehall, via Parliament Square and 10 Downing Street, to Trafalgar Square, with various photo opportunities along the way.

A close-up of campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network in Parliament Square on January 14, 2023, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo, holding photos of some of the 35 men who are still held, 20 of whom have been approved for release (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network opposite Downing Street on January 14, 2023, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo (Photo: Andy Worthington).
A close-up of campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network opposite Downing Street on January 14, 2023, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo, holding photos of some of the 35 men who are still held, 20 of whom have been approved for release (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network in Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network on the steps up to the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023, holding up posters of the 20 men still held who have been approved for release, as part of a march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo (Photo: Andy Worthington).

On the North Terrace, by the National Gallery, we focused particularly on the 20 men (out of the 35 still held) who have been approved for release, with campaigners standing in a line holding up the placards featuring their photos, following on from similar actions that we’ve previously undertaken at our monthly vigils (on the first Wednesday of every month) outside Parliament, and, in November, outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms.

Throughout the day, I also took photos of campaigners with the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking 7,671 days of the prison’s existence on January 11, which can all be seen here (and see here for another page featuring 130 other photos from supporters around the world).

At 2pm, a number of speakers then reinforced the message that, following the 21st anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo (on January 11), President Biden must take decisive action to free the 20 men approved for release, and must also work towards the prison’s closure before his term as president comes to an end two years from now.

Speakers included myself, Sara Birch, who introduced the speakers and read out a statement by former prisoner Omar Deghayes, which I’m posting below, Ann Garrett of the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, who read out a poem, Sara’s 16-year old daughter Aisha, who made her first ever public speech, Imam Suliman Gani, a longtime supporter of efforts to close Guantánamo, Dr. Deepa Govindarajan Driver, academic and trade unionist, and Lise Rossi of Amnesty International. I’ll be posting a video of my talk very soon.

After taking a break in the cafe in the crypt of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, five of us then made our way back down Whitehall to 10 Downing Street, where we had arranged to deliver a letter calling on the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to talk to President Biden, to urge him to close Guantánamo, and also to offer to take in one or two of the men approved for release who can’t be safely repatriated.

Sara Birch of the UK Guantánamo Network on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023, introducing the speakers at a rally for the closure of Guantánamo (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Sara Birch’s daughter Aisha speaking at a rally for the closure of Guantánamo on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023 (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Imam Suliman Gani speaking at a rally for the closure of Guantánamo on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023 (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Andy Worthington and David Burke of the UK Guantánamo Network at a rally for the closure of Guantánamo on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023. David was holding the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking 7,671 days of the prison’s existence on January 11, the 21st anniversary of its opening.
The speakers at the end of the rally for the closure of Guantánamo on the North Terrace of Trafalgar Square on January 14, 2023. Andy Worthington, in the centre, was holding the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking 7,671 days of the prison’s existence on January 11, the 21st anniversary of its opening.
Lise Rossi, Sara Birch, Andy Worthington and Susan Edwards of the UK Guantánamo Network, with Imam Suliman Gani, hand a letter in to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street on January 14, 2023, asking him to talk to President Biden, to urge him to close Guantánamo, and also to offer to take in one or two of the men approved for release who can’t be safely repatriated.

Our monthly vigils resume outside Parliament from 1pm to 3pm on Wednesday February 15 (followed by March 8 and April 5), when we will continue to focus on the 20 men approved for release but still held, whose plight we have been highlighting through the hashtag #FreeTheGuantanamo20 (and for whom I have made a poster that we’ll be turning into a stand-up display). We hope to hook up with campaigners in the US for coordinated protests in London and Washington, D.C., and we also intend to focus, each month, on the stories of these 20 men, beginning with Moath al-Alwi and Khalid Qasim, both talented artists, and both Yemenis who need third countries to be found that will offer them new homes.

We hope you’ll be able to join us in London or Washington, D.C., and please feel free to get in touch with me if you want to be involved in either the UK or the US.

Below I’m posting Omar Deghayes’ statement, as read out at the vigil by Sara Birch.

Omar Deghayes’ statement at the Guantánamo rally in London, January 14, 2023

As time passes by, our friends are still incarcerated for over twenty years without proper legal proceedings or the possibility of hearing their voices in defence of their accusations.

They were arrested in the midst of the chaos and hysteria that ensued after 9/11, causing unfairness and the abandonment of the Rule of Law.

A whole new generation has grown up without any knowledge of 9/11 or Guantánamo and yet prisoners remain locked up and tortured for more than 20 years.

But there are some wonderful, loyal and determined people who are gathered here today who have continued to resist this terrible injustice.

It is heartwarming to see your ongoing support for the Guantánamo cause, by demonstrating in London, New York and all over the world to remind people that justice must be served on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees.

A special mention to the Lewes Amnesty Group and the UK Guantanamo Network and my friends from Brighton. I salute their continued campaigning for Human Rights and Natural Justice as well as all the other journalists, activists and campaigners that remind us of this horrific situation every year.

I would also like to mention my brother Abubaker who has campaigned for years to close Guantánamo. Sadly, he is not with us today.

The remaining Guantánamo detainees are from several different countries and backgrounds. They have the might of the US military machine against them; they are being tortured whilst the world watches.

The politicians continue to shamelessly justify their terrifying, inhuman and barbaric acts by manipulating public opinion through every means available.

I thank you again and sincerely hope that this year will be the last year we gather here to ask for the closure of Guantánamo.

Perhaps next year we will meet to celebrate everyone’s release.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison 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 you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the struggle for housing justice — and against environmental destruction — continues.

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, The Complete Guantánamo Files, 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.


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24 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:

    Here’s my latest article, featuring my photos of, and my report about an inspiring march and rally for the closure of Guantanamo in central London on January 14, 2023. It was organised by the UK Guantanamo Network, a coalition of groups including a number of Amnesty International groups and the Close Guantanamo campaign.

    Campaigners, hooded, and in orange jumpsuits, marched in single file, and in silence, from Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall, via Parliament Square and 10 Downing Street, to Trafalgar Square, where there were a number of speeches (and I’ll be posting a video of my speech soon). Also included in the article is the text of a statement by former prisoner Omar Deghayes, which was read out at the rally.

    Campaigners also carried photos of the 35 men still held at Guantanamo, and in Trafalgar Square we focused on the 20 men out of the 35 who have been approved for release, but have not been freed. We began highlighting the plight of these men at our monthly vigils last year, using the hashtag #FreeTheGuantanamo20, and will continue to do so at our monthly vigils outside Parliament this year.

    These take place on the first Wednesday of every month (beginning on February 1), and we’re hoping to interest campaigners in Washington, D.C. in coordinating protests, as well as highlighting, each month, the stories some of these men, beginning with the talented artists Moath al-Alwi and Khalid Qasim, Yemenis who cannot be repatriated, and need third countries to be found that will offer them a new home.

    After the rally, five of us handed in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street, asking him to talk to President Biden, to urge him to close Guantanamo, and also to offer to take in one or two of the men approved for release who can’t be safely repatriated.

  2. Noel Hamel says...

    Thankyou Andy for your very comprehensive report and photo’s. Omar’s statement is particularly poignant and powerful since he was a former inmate of the prison, a non-rights-institution-of-phantasmagorical-inhumanity, with no other purpose. I hope to be part of the regular Wednesday vigils in future.

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for the supportive words, Noel, and for your accurate description of the prison. Looking forward to seeing you at the next monthly protest!

  4. Andy Worthington says...

    Richard Sroczynski wrote:

    Wonderful witness to an unending injustice. Thank you all for your inspiring dedication.

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for the wonderfully supportive words, Richard, and thanks for all your efforts too!

  6. Andy Worthington says...

    Tamzin Jans wrote:

    Is there any hope that the Biden Administration will be able to close Guantanamo concentration camp now?

  7. Andy Worthington says...

    Movement towards Guantanamo’s closure is frustratingly slow, Tamzin, but I’m hoping there will be good news in the coming months regarding freeing some of the 20 men approved for release who are still held. Apart from it being morally repugnant to approve men for release but then not to free them, it’s also true that the smaller the prison’s population, the more it becomes difficult to justify its cost – over half a billion dollars a year!

  8. Andy Worthington says...

    Tashi Farmilo-Marouf wrote:

    Andy, the U.S. military has drawn up plans to replace the base hospital at Guantánamo Bay with a new $435 million health care center that would provide care for hundreds of prison guards but appears to lack facilities specifically for aging war prisoners.

  9. Andy Worthington says...

    That’s a pretty shameful disregard for the prisoners’ needs, isn’t it, Tashi?

  10. Andy Worthington says...

    Tashi Farmilo-Marouf wrote:

    Andy, the question is, would they still be pumping money into it if they had intentions to close the prison?

  11. Andy Worthington says...

    I don’t think the funding of the health facility has any bearing on the prison’s future, Tashi, given that the US has no intention of giving up its naval base, and needs to provide services for all its personnel, in what is the equivalent of an entire American town.

    What’s more worrying is the funding for a new war court, announced over a year ago, although that seems to show more than anything else just quite how much money is unquestioningly provided to the military, because it won’t make the military commissions into any less broken a system, one that, fundamentally, is incapable of delivering justice.

  12. Andy Worthington says...

    Susan Hall wrote:

    Is this what freedom, democracy & liberty for all looks like? When I think about US history, I wonder!

  13. Andy Worthington says...

    Sadly, Susan, every day that Guantanamo remains open it reveals the gulf of hypocrisy between the US government’s claimed values and the dirty reality. Absolutely nothing about the prison reflects notions of “freedom, democracy & liberty for all.”

  14. Andy Worthington says...

    Roseanne Bellotti wrote, in response to 8, above:

    More injustice. I remember wondering if America was going to build a cemetery there since they were categorized as “forever prisoners.” They should all be released, even the so-called “high value detainees” because the “war” that got them into Gitmo is over. But the Bush gang made that impossible by a) claiming the whole world is “the battlefield” and the b) the detainees were not POWs, even tho it was a war they were supposedly fighting, but they were “unlawful enemy combatants” and could be imprisoned forever because they’d get no trial and they were not eligible for the protections the various treaties America helped writed and signed on to does not apply to “enemy combatants.” A contradiction based on pure evil. Obama blew it when he gave the Congress the time to mount a defense against closing down the horrible place and I am not sure how committed Biden is to ending it. He did not campaign on it. No Democrat has campaigned on the topic of Gitmo since Obama in 2008. A travesty. Some “leaders” should be in prison right now. Sorry for the rant.

  15. Andy Worthington says...

    Please don’t apologize, Roseanne. It’s not a rant; it’s a statement of inconvenient facts that all branches of the US government would rather ignore, and about which, sadly, the US public are largely unconcerned. I think it’s appropriate to make reference to policies whose intent was ‘pure evil’, and to suggest that certain prominent officials should have been charged with crimes, and it’s also appropriate to point out that President Biden seems unwilling to expend the political capital necessary to get Guantanamo closed.

    The best we can hope for, it seems, it that the 20 men approved for release will eventually be freed, although it’s already, shamefully, nearly two years since the first men approved for release by Periodic Review Boards were told that the US no longer wanted to hold them, and yet they’re still languishing there, with no sign of when, if ever, they will actually be freed.

  16. Andy Worthington says...

    Susan Hall wrote:

    Thank you for this excellent answer Andy & thank you for your honest work all these years.

  17. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Susan – and thank you for your steadfast support over these many long years of working towards getting Guantanamo closed.

  18. Andy Worthington says...

    Tamzin Jans wrote:

    I think it needs to be named as a concentration camp. That might get more people to sit up and take notice. It is, after all, that, since it has a concentration of Muslim men.

  19. Andy Worthington says...

    I suppose that, because of the Nazis’ concentration camps, which should perhaps have been more accurately described as ‘extermination camps’, people have shied away from using a similar term for Guantanamo, Tamzin, although Britannica’s definition of a concentration camp is accurate in relation to Guantanamo: an “internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp

  20. Andy Worthington says...

    Roseanne Bellotti wrote:

    Somewhere early in the history of this evil place it started being called “The American Gulag,” which is completely accurate.

  21. Andy Worthington says...

    It’s true, Roseanne. Amnesty International referred to it as “the gulag of our times” in 2005, although ‘concentration camp’ is actually more accurate, as the gulags were, specifically, forced labour camps established under Lenin and Stalin, which ended up being death camps. I’m actually quite astonished how the definition of concentration camp is accurate for Guantanamo, and, as I noted above, I can only think that it hasn’t been used because people associate the phrase ‘concentration camp’ with the Nazis, even though they should more accurately be regarded as death camps.

  22. Andy Worthington says...

    Tamzin Jans wrote:

    Andy, you and Reprieve are the only ones doing so much for the prisoners there. It is wonderful and very compassionate of you.

  23. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Tamzin. I’m glad you appreciate my efforts. I had no idea when I started this work 17 years ago that Guantanamo would still be open, but as long as it is I will continue to call for its closure, and to explain why. There are no circumstances whatsoever whereby it is acceptable that a place like Guantanamo continues to exist.

  24. Andy Worthington says...

    For a Spanish version, on the World Can’t Wait’s Spanish website, see ‘Fotos y reporte: la inspiradora marcha de Close Guantánamo en Londres el 14 de enero del 2023’: http://www.worldcantwait-la.com/worthington-fotos-reporte-inspirador-marcha-close-gtmo-londres.htm

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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