Guantanamo campaigns

Publicising a fundraising appeal by the Guantánamo Survivors Fund, which was established in April this year to provide help with medical care, rent, language classes, tuition and job training for former prisoners abandoned by the US after their release.

Promoting a letter to President Biden from eight former Guantánamo prisoners, urging him to drop a ban on released prisoners leaving with their artwork, or even giving it as gifts to their lawyers (and, via them, to their family members), which was imposed under Donald Trump in November 2017, in response to Pentagon hysteria about an exhibition of prisoners’ artwork in New York.

With the government of Liz Truss in chaos, having crashed the economy, but still committed to widening inequality and trashing the environment, there’s never been a better time to get involved in protests taking place in London from October 1 to October 16, involving Just Stop Oil, Enough Is Enough, the UK Guantánamo Network, the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign, and Extinction Rebellion.

I’m delighted to publicise the first ever UK speaking tour — throughout March 2022 — by former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Salahi (aka Slahi), with events in cities including London, Cambridge and Edinburgh, and also in Brighton and Tunbridge Wells, where I’ll be joining him. Some of the events will also feature screenings of ‘The Mauritanian’, the film based on Mohamedou’s memoir, ‘Guantánamo Diary’, featuring Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Encouraging opponents of Guantánamo’s continued existence to write to the 39 men still held at the prison. Although 15 of these men have been approved for release under President Biden, bringing to 20 the number of men still held who have been approved for release, just two men have been freed in the last five years. And with Covid also increasing the remaining prisoners’ already unprecedented isolation over the last two years, it is to be hoped that they will be glad to hear that they haven’t been forgotten.

My photos of, and a report about the protest for the closure of Guantánamo that took place in central London on Jan. 8, 2022, with a march of 39 campaigners in orange jumpsuits and hoods, representing the 39 men still held, and speakers in Trafalgar Square.

Events taking place to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on Jan. 11, 2022, featuring myself and Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012. Some of these events are in the US, some are in the UK, and they are mostly online but with a few carefully managed Iive events.

The video of “Life After Guantánamo,” an online discussion between myself and former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, hosted by the Justice for Muslims Collective, which took place last week, and was intended primarily as a fundraiser for Mansoor. We discussed resistance at Guantánamo, the deaths of prisoners, art classes, and how the “taint” of Guantánamo haunts former prisoners, and is an ongoing part of the dehumanization process established at the prison nearly 20 years ago. It is also an injustice that I hope to address through establishing a new organization aimed at removing the “enemy combatant” stigma, and, ultimately, holding the US to account for the fundamental lawlessness of Guantánamo.

Publicizing a petition calling on President Biden to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which, impressively, secured over 330,000 signatures. Initiated by groups including Daily Kos, MPower Change and Amnesty International USA, it was delivered to the White House on September 20, the 20th anniversary of George W. Bush telling Congress that the US had launched a “war on terror” in response to the 9/11 attacks.

A cross-post of a detailed article about Guantánamo activism over the last 12 years, from President Obama’s eight years in office, through the four lamentable years of Donald Trump, to the current hopes pinned on President Biden. Written by Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture, it was originally published on the Waging Nonviolence website.