If You Can, Please Support the Guantánamo Survivors Fund This Holiday Season
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.
In a just world, the US government would have done all in its power to ensure that prisoners held at Guantánamo for years without charge or trial, and then released, would have had opportunities to rebuild their lives with proper support and without harassment.
The truth, however, is that those released from Guantánamo remain unfairly tainted by having been held there, and cannot rely on any of the rights — freedom to travel, and freedom from arbitrary harassment and even imprisonment, for example — that all human beings are supposed to be able to take for granted.
In the cases of those prisoners who have been released to their home countries, the US’s role is necessarily limited, but in the cases of those resettled in third countries because it was regarded as unsafe for them to be repatriated, or because Congress passed laws preventing their repatriation, the US government is responsible for how these men have been treated, and continue to be treated after their release. Around 150 men are in this category of former prisoners, resettled in dozens of countries around the world.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
