Photos and Report: Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on August 2, 2023

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On Wednesday (August 2), the latest monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo took place in seven locations worldwide — London, Washington, D.C., New York City, Mexico City, Detroit, Cobleskill, NY and Los Angeles — with former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi joining us in a one-man vigil in his apartment in Belgrade.

Because it’s holiday season, campaigners in a few locations — Brussels, Copenhagen and Minneapolis — were unable to join us this month, but they’ll be back next month, on Wednesday September 6, when, we’re glad to hear, many of the campaigners involved around the world are working towards making their vigils as prominent as possible.

The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and began in February, when I asked friends and colleagues across the US, and in Mexico City, Brussels and Copenhagen, to join the monthly vigils for the prison’s closure that campaigners in London had been undertaking since September last year, drawing on a long tradition of Guantánamo vigils outside the Houses of Parliament.

For the development of the vigils, please see my reports from March, April, May, June and July, copiously illustrated with photos.

In London, where the vigils are organized by the UK Guantánamo Network (involving numerous Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo and other campaigners), 12 of us gathered despite torrential rain, while in Mexico City, in burning heat, Amnesty International campaigners staged a visually arresting vigil in Parque México (Parque San Martín) in Mexico City.

In New York City, 14 people gathered, “including visitors from Leeds”, as Debra Sweet, the National Director of the World Can’t Wait explained, with other smaller vigils taking place in the other locations, including four key campaigners — the Revd. T. C. Morrow of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), David Barrows and Helen Schietinger of Witness Against Torture, and Steve Lane of Close Guantánamo — outside the Capitol, where the US’s lawmakers could, and should take action to speed Guantánamo’s closure.

In Los Angeles, where activist Jon Krampner has been holding solo vigils outside the Federal Building downtown, he was joined by local activist and author Diane Lefer, although no photos were taken, while, in Detroit, although Amnesty campaigner Geraldine Grunow noted that there were just four campaigners, she explained, “we got some supportive honking, and a very sweet young man drove past and then came back to thank us for being there,” and also took the photo.

I hope you find the photos of the vigils as inspiring as I do, seeing people from around the world coming together, as I explained last month, “to demonstrate the importance of taking a stand, and refusing to respond to the colossal injustice of Guantánamo either through silence or invisibility.”

I also hope that you can join us for the next vigils, on September 6, as we continue to call for the prison’s closure, and, most urgently, for the 16 men approved for release but still held to be freed, and for proper medical and psychological care to be implemented for all of the 30 men still held.

As I explained in a poster that I prepared for the vigils, as of August 2, the men approved for release had been held for between 313 and 4,940 days since the US authorities decided that they no longer wanted to hold them, which rather makes a mockery of the entire notion of them being “approved for release” at all.

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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.

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