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My thanks, as always, to the campaigners in ten different locations across the US and around the world who came together on Wednesday (July 3), to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay — in Washington, D.C., London, New York City, Mexico City, Brussels, San Francisco, Detroit, Cobleskill, NY, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, from organizations including Amnesty International, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait and the UK Guantánamo Network, and with supporting organizations including the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the Center for Constitutional Rights and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

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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.

On Wednesday, campaigners in ten locations across the US and around the world held the latest monthly coordinated global vigils calling for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which, on June 23, will have been open for 8,200 days.

The monthly vigils, which I initiated last February, took place in Washington, D.C., New York, London, Mexico City, Brussels, San Francisco, Cobleskill, NY, Detroit, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, and focused, as usual, not just on calls for the prison’s eventual closure, but also for the immediate release of 16 men (out of the 30 still held) who have long been approved for release, but are still held because the decisions to release them — taken unanimously by high-level US government review processes — were, nevertheless, purely administrative. This means that no legal mechanism exists to compel the Biden administration to free them, if, as is increasingly apparent, President Biden and Antony Blinken have no interest in prioritizing their release.

As the poster that I update every month shows, as of June 5, these men had been held for between 621 and 1,315 days since the decisions were taken to release them, and, in three outlying cases, for 5,248 days. Any country that tolerates this cannot be said to have the slightest respect for the law, or, indeed, for any fundamental human notions of decency.

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With Gaza, understandably, dominating the news, as Israel’s genocide continues, and peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors at campuses across the US are being violently assaulted by police on behalf of their universities’ administrators, it’s a tribute to the tenacity of human rights campaigners at five locations across the US — and in London and Brussels — that, on Wednesday, they came out onto the streets to also try to remind people of the ongoing existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and, in particular, the plight of the 16 men (out of 30 still held in total), who have long been approved for release but are still held.

Coordinated monthly vigils for the closure of Guantánamo have been taking place across the US and around the world on the first Wednesday of every month since I began organizing them last February, and on Wednesday, May 1, vigils took place in Washington, D.C., New York, London, Brussels, Cobleskill, NY, Detroit and Los Angeles.

San Francisco didn’t hold a vigil this month, but coordinator Gavrilah Wells took photos at two events at the weekend, and campaigners in Mexico City were also unable to take part, although Natalia Rivera Scott arranged instead for two former prisoners to take photos with posters calling for the prison’s closure.

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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.

On Wednesday (April 3), the latest monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place at five locations across the US, in London, in Mexico City, and, as a special one-off event, in the European Parliament in Brussels.

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