Photos and Report: Dismay and Determination at the Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure on November 6, 2024

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Weariness mingled with determination marked the mood at the nine monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay that took place across the US, and in London and Brussels, on November 6, 2024, the day after the US Presidential Election, when it had already become clear that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. Those involved represent organizations including Amnesty International, Close Guantánamo, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, NRCAT (the National Religious Campaign Against Torture), Veterans for Peace and the UK Guantánamo Network.

Photos of these vigils are posted below, along with comments from those involved in organizing them, reflecting on their feelings as the news began to sink in that, in just ten weeks’ time, Guantánamo’s biggest supporter will be back in the White House. Please enjoy the photos and the commentary, and continue reading for my reflections on what this particular result means for the 30 men still held at Guantánamo. The next vigils are on Wednesday December 4, and in January we’ll break from our normal vigils on the first Wednesday of every month to join with other groups on Saturday January 11, the 23rd anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, when we’ll also be marking 8,400 days of Guantánamo’s existence.

While we all fear the worst for Trump’s second term as president — in connection with the already apocalyptic reality of climate collapse, women’s reproductive rights, the safety of immigrants and refugees, and, quite probably, unfettered support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and its predatory actions in the West Bank and Lebanon — what all of us gathered on Wednesday also knew immediately was that, specifically on Guantánamo, Trump will be an unmitigated disaster, sealing the prison shut as he did in his first term in office, so that no one will leave the prison unless, by some miracle, they secure a victory in a habeas corpus petition in a US court.

For nearly two years, since I initiated the monthly global vigils on the first Wednesday of every month in February 2023, campaigners have been working tirelessly to try to get the Biden administration to address the plight of the men still held at Guantánamo, in particular by releasing the men still held who have long been approved for release.

At the time of Trump’s victory, of the 30 men still held at Guantánamo, 16 of them, to Biden’s shame, have been approved for release for between two and four years, and in three outlying cases for nearly 15 years. All are still held because the decisions to release them were taken by high-level US government review boards, whose decisions were purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to actually free them, if, as has become increasingly apparent, the Biden administration has had no interest in doing so.

An additional complication is that, for the most part, these men cannot be sent back to their home countries, because of provisions created by Republicans, proscribing the return of prisoners to certain countries, which are included every year in the annual National Defense Authorization Act. As a result, third countries must be found that are prepared to offer them new homes.

A year ago, eleven of these men were meant to have been resettled in Oman, but their planned release coincided with the October 7 attacks in Israel, and was called off after the Biden administration decided that the “political optics” were not appropriate for their release.

No new date has been set for these men’s release, but what is desperately needed right now is for President Biden to recognize that, having failed to free anyone from Guantánamo since April 2023, and with the imminent horrors of Trump’s animosity towards everyone held there creeping closer with ever passing day, he needs to act with great urgency to locate a suitable destination for resettlement, and to finalize negotiations with the host country, or host countries, before December 19, so that they can freed on January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. The month’s delay relates to another act of Republican obstruction, requiring that Congress be notified 30 days before the release of anyone from Guantánamo.

In the coming weeks, I anticipate that lawyers and human rights organizations will be pooling resources to try to exert pressure on Biden in his last two months in office, and I intend to work with them as much as possible, and to do what I can to facilitate the involvement of activists and campaigners, who have been so important in trying to keep the injustice of Guantánamo in the public eye, to hold back the amnesia that otherwise threatens to engulf it entirely.

Please feel free to watch the video below, via YouTube, in which, at the London vigil, I explained the situation at Guantánamo right now, and why it is so imperative for President Biden to take swift action to free the men still held who have long been approved for release.

Further photos from the vigils are below.

The ninth vigil that took place on November 6 was in Los Angeles, via solitary campaigner Jon Krampner, who sent the following message: “I stood in front of the Downtown Los Angeles Federal Building for an hour today in my orange jumpsuit and black hood with my AI ‘Close Guantánamo’ sign. It seemed like there were a few more people than usual today. Apparently there were a lot of people there for their citizenship reviews, as I could occasionally hear building security officers tell prospective interviewees not to bring in any weapons, guns, knives, illegal drugs or alcohol. It seems counterintuitive to me that someone would show up to a citizenship interview with a bazooka, Bowie knife, line of coke and a pint of Jim Beam, but the federal government wants to have all bases covered. I did get one person to take a picture of me. I gave him a slip of paper with my e-mail address printed in 18-point boldface type and he appeared to send it to me while I was standing there. But, as is so often the case, when I got home, there was no e-mail from him.”

In Minneapolis, Amnesty campaigners canceled their proposed vigil, because, as they explained, “We have just left daylight savings time, so our event would have been in darkness.” Instead, however, they held a Virtual Guantánamo event instead, with members of the group urged to contact President Biden.

In Mexico City, meanwhile, campaigners were unable to hold their monthly vigil, but Natalia Rivera Scott wrote, “I took some photos with my altar for the Día de Muertos. Every year I put the names of the men of Guantánamo that have died so I hope it’s meaningful.” One of those photos is posted below.

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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.