Archive for October, 2023
Celebrating Eight Years Since the Release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in the Prison
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Eight years ago today, I was awoken in the morning, while it was still dark, by a phone call from my friend and colleague Joanne MacInnes, telling me that she was at Biggin Hill airport, where Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, was arriving by plane, a free man after nearly 14 years in US custody, almost all of it spent without charge or trial at Guantánamo, where he was regularly held in solitary confinement, and where he railed relentlessly against the injustice of his imprisonment.
It was the cumulation of over nine years, on my part, of writing about and campaigning for Shaker’s release, which began in 2006 when I was researching my book The Guantánamo Files, in which I told, for the first time, the stories of around 450 of the 779 men held at Guantánamo by the US military since the prison opened in January 2002, and noted that Shaker was an “enormously charismatic figure”, who, as a result, was regarded with great suspicion by the authorities.
After I completed the manuscript for the book in May 2007, one of the first events about Guantánamo that I attended was ‘Shaker Aamer, A South London Man in Guantánamo: The Children Speak’, held in south London on June 29, 2007, at which Shaker’s daughter Johina, then nine years old, spoke, as did Marium Begg, the daughter of Shaker’s friend Moazzam Begg, also held in Guantánamo, who had been released in January 2005.
Five Years Since the Violent Tidemill Eviction, Its Ghosts Still Haunt Peabody’s New ‘Frankham Walk’ Development
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Five years ago today, on October 29, 2018, the brave two-month occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden, a community garden in Deptford, came to a violent end when bailiffs hired by Lewisham Council, from the union-busting company County Enforcement, raided the garden at dawn, evicting the handful of campaigners staying there overnight in what they subsequently characterised as a terrifying quasi-military operation.
The bailiffs subsequently began tearing down trees, including the garden’s prized Indian bean trees, and demolishing all of the structures that had contributed to its community focus — the colourful tree house by the bean trees, which had entertained children throughout the garden’s 25-year history, and a number of sheds that had, most recently, been used as exhibition spaces.
Throughout the rest of the day, there was a tense stand-off between campaigners and hundreds of local people who had turned up to offer support, and the bailiffs, protected by a row of police. As campaigners conducted interviews with a number of broadcasters, including the BBC, and campaigners railed against the bailiffs and the police via a loudhailer, occasional skirmishes broke out, in which a number of people were injured, but by the end of the day the garden was ‘secured.’
Video: My Impassioned Speech at the EU Parliament’s “Close Guantánamo!” Event on Sep. 28, 2023
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What a difference a month makes.
On September 28, I was in Brussels, taking part in “Close Guantánamo!”, a moving and powerful event in the European Parliament that I’d been working towards for six months with the indefatigable Irish independent MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, and former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi.
Over the course of three hours, a rapt audience heard a mixture of emotional, inspiring and legally compelling testimony about the evils of Guantánamo, the need to get the prison closed, and the urgent need to find new homes for at least 13 of the 30 men still held, who have been approved for release but cannot be repatriated. This is a pressing problem in need of a solution, with which, we all hoped, European countries might be able to help.
On October 1, I posted a detailed report about the event, also featuring the full three-hour video of it, at which the speakers, including Mansoor and myself, were two other former prisoners, Lakhdar Boumediene and Moazzam Begg, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, who summarized her devastating report about historic and continuing abuses at Guantánamo, based on the first ever visit to Guantánamo by a UN Rapporteur, which she undertook in February, the lawyers Alka Pradhan and Beth Jacob, Valerie Lucznikowska of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and James Yee, the former Muslim Chaplain at Guantánamo.
Afterwards, however, just as Clare and Mick were preparing to follow up, editing the event into smaller and more manageable podcasts and videos, and just as I was preparing to post a video of my speech, which Clare’s team had sent to me, the events of October 7 — when Hamas militants broke out of their “open air prison” in the Gaza Strip and went on a killing spree that left 1,400 people dead — threw all our plans into disarray, as it was immediately followed up by indiscriminate bombing raids of unprecedented ferocity on Gaza’s mercilessly trapped civilians, who, to compound their agonies, also had all their water, food, medical supplies and fuel supplies cut off.
The Erasure of Gaza: The Equivalent of 285 9/11s, Israel’s Guantánamo, and Genocide
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And so the evil — there is no other word for it — continues, as, after two weeks of unprecedented airstrikes on the trapped civilians of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military continues to increase its attacks, with 704 people, including 305 children and 173 women killed in the last 24 hours.
Last week, when I last wrote about the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s merciless and relentless bombing campaign, over a thousand children had been killed in Israeli bombing raids, out of a total death toll of over 3,000.
In just a week, that number has more than doubled.
As the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported today, 2,450 children have now been killed by Israel bombing raids, as well as 1,323 women, out of a total of 5,926 people killed overall. In addition, 16,124 people have been wounded, and around 1,500 people are reported missing and buried under rubble, including 830 children.
How Many Children Must Die? As the Death Toll of Palestinian Children in Gaza Surpasses 1,000, A Ceasefire Is Urgently Required
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For the last ten days, like all sensitive people everywhere, I’ve been aware that a rift has opened up in the world — a dangerous tear in the very fabric of human decency, of fundamental morality, through which supposed justifications are loudly being made to excuse the killing, in the Gaza Strip, of children, of women, of the elderly and the ill, and of unarmed men “of military age” who have not engaged in any kind of military conflict at all.
It’s an age-old story, sadly. Throughout human history, men — it’s almost always only men — have slaughtered civilians in their quest, or their leaders’ quest for land, power and control. You could be forgiven for thinking that what drives most wars is actually an excuse to unleash these darkest impulses, and that everything else is secondary.
Gideon Levy’s ‘A Brief History of Killing Children’
It’s nearly two years since the great Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote an article for Haaretz, Israel’s oldest newspaper, entitled ‘A Brief History of Killing Children’, in which he chronicled the moral decline of the Israeli government from the 1990s to the time of writing through the ways in which Palestinian children have been treated.
My Shame at the West’s Uncritical Support for Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
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What a disgrace it was on Sunday to see the UK’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, tweeting a photo of a huge Israeli flag projected onto 10 Downing Street, accompanied by the message, “We stand with Israel.” It followed an earlier tweet in which he declared, “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself.”
The exact same message was repeated across the West. “Israel has a right to defend itself — full stop”, President Biden tweeted, while Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, tweeted, “Israel has the right to defend itself — today and in the days to come”, and also declared — unilaterally, apparently, speaking for the whole of the EU — “The European Union stands with Israel.”
My disappointment with these official Western positions doesn’t stem from any kind of endorsement of Hamas’s actions on Saturday morning; or, rather, endorsing any actions undertaken by Hamas that specifically targeted civilians. As a lifelong pacifist, war disgusts me. I know that violence always begets more violence, that civilians always suffer, and that women and children are always killed, and I cannot support the killing of civilians under any circumstances.
Photos and Report: The Coordinated Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on October 4, 2023
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UPDATE October 12: Added below are four photos from the UK Guantánamo Network‘s vigil in Parliament Square, in London, which took place a week late, on Wednesday October 11, because of a train strike on October 4.
On Wednesday October 4, the latest monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo took place in eleven locations worldwide — Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Raleigh, NC, Mexico City, Brussels, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cobleskill, NY, and Minneapolis, although in the latter location no photographer was available. In London, we delayed our vigil for a week until October 11, because of a train strike, and I’ll be adding photos next week.
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 previous vigils, please see my reports from March, April, May, June, July, August and September, all accompanied by numerous photos.
Oct. 22: ‘Grassroots Protest: Activism From Below’ in Conway Hall – I Discuss Guantánamo and the Campaign to Free Shaker Aamer; Leila Hassan Discusses the Anti-Racist Movement of the ’70s and ’80s
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I’m delighted to announce that, on Sunday October 22, I’m taking part in ‘Grassroots Protest: Activism From Below’, part of the ‘Ethical Matters’ programme put together by the Conway Hall Ethical Society, and also part of the Bloomsbury Festival.
The event runs from 3-4.30pm, and tickets are £9, with concessions at £6. Tickets for the live stream are also available for £6, and the event is free for Conway Hall members. You can book a ticket here.
I was asked to take part to discuss, in particular, my work with the We Stand With Shaker campaign, in 2014-15, which I co-founded with another activist, Joanne MacInnes, and which helped to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, who had been held for over 13 years without charge or trial.
Video and Report: The Incredibly Powerful “Close Guantánamo!” Event in the EU Parliament, September 28, 2023
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I’m just back from the most extraordinary three-day trip to Brussels, the centrepiece of which was “Close Guantánamo!,” an astonishing and deeply moving three-hour event in the EU Parliament featuring nine speakers.
Three of the speakers were former prisoners, including Mansoor Adayfi, held for over 14 years at Guantánamo and subsequently resettled in Serbia, where, after nearly seven years, he has only this year secured a passport and been able to travel outside the country. Also speaking were two lawyers, a UN Rapporteur and myself, as well as the former Muslim Chaplain at the prison, and the relative of a victim of the 9/11 attacks.
The full video is below, via YouTube, and I hope that you have time to watch it, and that you’ll share if if you find it as inspiring as those who attended it, and those who took part in it. An edited version will hopefully be available soon, including the contents of PowerPoint presentations that were made by some of the speakers, which are not visible in this recording of the event, and the removal of some of the dead time — for example, the general milling about between the first and second sessions.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
