Photos and Report: The Coordinated Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo in London, Washington, D.C., New York, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Brussels and Detroit on May 3, 2023

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On Wednesday (May 3), the latest coordinated global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place in eight cities across the world — London, Washington, D.C. New York, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Brussels, Detroit and Los Angeles — and with former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi joining us in Belgrade.

The idea for coordinated vigils arose from the monthly vigils that the UK Guantánamo Network (a coalition of various Amnesty groups, Close Guantánamo and other groups) started last September, and I was inspired to try coordinating vigils worldwide after reflecting on the various actions marking the 21st anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo in January.

Fortunately, friends in Washington, D.C. agreed to join in in February, with New York and Mexico City joining in March, and Brussels, Los Angeles, Raleigh, NC and Cobleskill, NY joining last month, and this month we were delighted to also welcome campaigners in Copenhagen and Detroit.

The aim of the vigils is not only to remind the Biden administration that people across the US and around the world care about the ever-urgent need for Guantánamo to be closed, but also, more urgently, that 16 of the 30 men who have been unanimously approved for release by high-level government review processes — shamefully, for between 222 and 4,849 days, as of May 3 — are still held.

Although three of these men can and should be repatriated, 13 others are in need of third countries to offer them new homes, because of prohibitions on returning them to their home countries that have been included by Republicans every year since the early days of the Obama presidency in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, along with a prohibition on bringing any prisoners to the US mainland for any reason.

In the UK and across the EU, campaigners are in the early stages of trying to persuade their governments to offer homes to some of of these men for humanitarian reasons, and the vigils, therefore, provide a powerful opportunity to amplify this message.

In London, where the weather was sunny, campaigners, myself included, moved from our usual location in Parliament Square to the US Embassy in Nine Elms. We were encouraged by the numbers of passing vehicles honking their horns in support, and, towards the end of our two-hour vigil, a young American called Henry joined us, after getting a new passport from the Embassy to replace his original passport, which he had lost. After joking around with us for a while, he ended up wearing an orange jumpsuit and having his photo taken with us.

While London had been holding the best-attended vigils until this point, we were outdone on Wednesday by New York and Mexico City. In New York, the event was organized by the World Can’t Wait, with support from Brooklyn For Peace, NYC War Resisters League, Veterans for Peace, Uptown Progressive Action, the Granny Peace Brigade, and NYC Metro Raging Grannies, with Debra Sweet, the WCW’s National Director, explaining that blogger The Talking Dog spoke about recent releases from the prison, and the recent UN report about Abu Zubaydah, while Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture “sent us off with the morality we need.” For next month’s vigils — on Wednesday June 7 — Debra promises “more sound, more flyers, and more signs.” In Mexico City, meanwhile, activists Natalia Rivera Scott and Alli McCracken secured great support from members of Amnistía Internacional México. Thanks also to Daphne Eviatar of Amnesty International USA for publicizing the events to Amnesty members across the US.

Thanks also to Steve Lane, Helen Schietinger and other activists in Washington, D.C., to Frederikke Borglund and Amnesty Events Copenhagen for their striking vigil, to Jeanne Ghislaine and the Comité Free.Assange.Belgium in Brussels, to Jon Krampner for his solo vigil in downtown L.A., to Elliott Adams and the Schoharie Peacemakers in Cobleskill, NY, and to Geraldine, Dan, Gene and Kathy who joined us for the first time at the Federal Building in Detroit for what Geraldine described as “a VERY wet and windy vigil”, adding, “We’ll have better weather and better signs next month, we promise! Meanwhile, we will keep insisting that Guantánamo be closed NOW.”

And finally, spare a thought for former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, who joined us in Belgrade, where, he said, he unfortunately had no one to hold a vigil with, and where, I’m pretty sure, holding an outdoor protest would have been frowned upon. It’s a reminder that we shouldn’t take our freedoms for granted, and that, sadly, being released from Guantánamo doesn’t necessarily mean being free.

If you can, please join us next month, either by joining an existing vigil, or by starting your own (and if you do set up a vigil, please let me know).

Contacts

London: Sara Birch on 07710 789616.
Washington, D.C.: Steve Lane on 571-221-4120.
New York: Debra Sweet on 646-807-3259.
Mexico City: Natalia on 55 3993 1730.

P.S. Please also join the Close Guantánamo campaign’s ongoing photo campaign, taking a photo of yourself with the poster marking 7,800 days of Guantánamo’s existence on May 20, and sending it to info@closeguantanamo.org. All the photos will be posted here, and on social media.

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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 (see the ongoing 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, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

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.