Archive for January, 2024
Close Guantánamo: Our Achievements in 2023, Marking Guantánamo’s 22nd Anniversary on Jan. 11, and What We Can Do in 2024
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Thanks to everyone who took part in events marking the 22nd anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on January 11 — via the 20 vigils for the prison’s closure that took place across the US and around the world, via our ongoing photo campaign, for which over 120 people sent in photos of themselves with a poster marking 8,036 days of the prison’s existence on January 11, and calling for its closure, and via a number of online events.
One of these events was an online panel discussion, hosted by the New America think-tank in Washington, D.C., at which I was joined by the eloquent former prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who, until recently, was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism.
Last year, Fionnuala became the first UN Rapporteur to visit the prison, subsequently producing what I described at the time as “a devastatingly critical report about systemic, historic and ongoing human rights abuses at the prison,” in which she concluded that, despite some improvements to the regime under Presidents Obama and Biden, the totality of ongoing conditions at the prison amounts to “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” which, in certain cases, “may also meet the legal threshold for torture.”
International Court of Justice: Israel Must Cease All Activities That May Constitute Genocide, Punish Genocidal Officials and Allow Humanitarian Aid into Gaza
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Make no mistake about it. Today’s ruling, by the International Court of Justice, imposing provisional measures on Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention, in response to a submission submitted by South Africa, and argued before the Court on December 29, is hugely significant.
By a majority of 15-2, and in some cases 16-1, the Court found that South Africa had established a compelling case that Israel’s actions, in response to the attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, were so severe that it is plausible that they constitute genocidal intent under Article II of the Genocide Convention; namely, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, via “killing members of the group”, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
The Court duly ordered that “Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of [the] Convention”, and “must ensure with immediate effect that its military forces do not commit any of the above-described acts.”
Video: Guantánamo at 22 – Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Andy Worthington at New America
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On January 11, the 22nd anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, I was delighted to take part in an online panel discussion, “Guantánamo at Twenty-Two: What is the Future of the Prison Camp?”, hosted by New America, the US think-tank located close to the White House in Washington, D.C.
I’ve been taking part in annual panel discussions about Guantánamo at New America since 2011, normally with Tom Wilner, the US attorney with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012, but this year Tom wasn’t available, and I was pleased that my suggestions for two compelling replacements — former prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of the best-selling Guantánamo Diary, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism — were met with enthusiasm.
The moderator was Peter Bergen, New America’s Vice President, and the video, via YouTube, is posted below. It was a powerful event, and I hope that you have time to watch it, and that you’ll share it if you find it useful.
Photos and Report: The Close Guantánamo March and Rally in Central London, Jan. 20, 2024
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On Saturday (January 20), a colourful and inspiring march and rally for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place in central London, organized by the UK Guantánamo Network, which consists of members of a number of local Amnesty International groups from across London and the south east, plus other campaigners, myself included.
The event was organized to mark the recent 22nd anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11, when a handful of campaigners braved bitterly cold weather to stage a vigil outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms, as part of the monthly coordinated global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure that I initiated a year ago. See here for my report about, and photos from the 16 vigils that took place in the US and around the world to mark the anniversary.
Complementing that vigil, the march and rally took place on a Saturday for maximum visibility, and would have taken place on Saturday January 13 had it not been for the fact that a massive March for Palestine was scheduled for that particular date, which I posted photos of — and commentary about — here.
Why We Must All Rise Up Against the Genocidal White Supremacists of Zionist Israel and the West
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Since Israel launched its genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza over three months ago, astute commentators in the west have noted that the masks of feigned decency have fallen from the faces of our leaders, revealing them to be, fundamentally, the same genocidal, racist supporters of colonial settler violence that their predecessors were in those long centuries when they pillaged the world, killing and enslaving native populations, and, when met with resistance, often engaging in genocide.
The speed with which the masks fell has, genuinely, been shocking to watch, even though historically, of course, the countries of the west have indulged Israel, as the last great European settler colonial project, since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine (which British was administering as a Mandate after the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire), and the blood-soaked creation of the State of Israel in 1948, when around 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homes in what is known to Palestinians as the Nakba (“catastrophe”).
According to British records, 376,415 Jewish immigrants, mostly from Europe, arrived in Palestine between 1920 and 1946, and, even though most of these Jews had avoided the Holocaust, and even though the armed groups who fought to establish the Israeli state did so through terrorism, not only against the Palestinians, but also against the British, the post-war western consensus on Israel was that it must be indulged, to assuage the guilt the European powers felt over the Holocaust as well as their well-chronicled oppression of Jewish people over many centuries.
Photos and Report: The Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 22nd Anniversary of the Prison’s Opening
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Global Events Marking the 22nd Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo on Jan. 11
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. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Next Thursday, January 11, the US government’s shameful and disgraceful “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 22 years, and a number of online events, as well as in-person vigils and rallies, are taking place across the US and around the world, which are listed below.
This is an unforgivable anniversary for a prison that should never have existed, where men continue to be held indefinitely without charge or trial, or mired in a broken trial system, the military commissions, that is incapable of delivering justice.
Guantánamo’s continued existence ought to be a source of profound shame for the three branches of the US government — the executive, Congress and the judiciary — who have all failed to close it, for the mainstream US media, who have largely failed to recognize the gravity of the crimes committed there over the last 22 years, and for the majority of the American people, who have failed to take an interest in what is being done in their name in this secretive prison on the grounds of a US naval base on the shore of Cuba’s easternmost bay.
Radio: I Discuss Israel’s Genocide in Gaza and Guantánamo’s 22nd Anniversary with Misty Winston on TNT Radio
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On Tuesday, I was delighted to talk to the US radio host Misty Winston, on the Australian-based online radio station TNT Radio, about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the imminent 22nd anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The interview is available here on video, and I’ve also embedded it below, and the audio only version is available here.
Misty and I have spoken many times before, and our interview began 18 minutes into the one-hour show, after Misty spoke about the significance of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and her colleague Adam Clark spoke about the struggle against censorship — and for free speech — in the US election year.
Misty and I began by discussing Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, with Misty thanking me for acknowledging, very early on in what Al Jazeera accurately calls “Israel’s War on Gaza”, but most western media disgracefully describe as the “Israeli-Hamas War”, that, after years of remaining silent on Israel’s crimes over the last 75 years, because I feared its impact on my Guantánamo work, I could no longer remain silent as what is very evidently a genocide began to unfold. Misty also thanked me for my writing, in which I’ve been covering the unforgivable lawlessness of Israel’s three-month assault, via my articles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
