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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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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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As the prison at Guantánamo Bay continues its miserable existence, now in its 23rd year of denying justice to the men held, and betraying every legal principle that is supposed to distinguish the US from dictatorships, I’m grateful to the campaigners across the US, and around the world, who, following the annual protests for Guantánamo’s closure on January 11, the 22nd anniversary of its opening, have resumed the monthly vigils that I initiated a year ago to try to keep a light shining on Guantánamo once a month rather than just once a year.

Via organizations including numerous Amnesty International groups, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture and The World Can’t Wait, vigils took place on Wednesday (February 7) in Washington, D.C., Cobleskill, NY, Detroit and San Francisco, as well as in Mexico City and London, where I joined fellow campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament, and in Brussels and Copenhagen, where campaigners held their vigils on the preceding days.

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Two weeks ago, on Saturday January 20, a march and rally for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay was held in London, marking the 22nd anniversary of the the prison’s opening on January 11. The event was organized by the UK Guantánamo Network, a coalition of campaigning groups including numerous Amnesty International members from across London and the south east.

I posted a detailed report about that event, illustrated with photos by myself and by photographer Sinai Noor, two weeks ago, and I’m now following up with the video of the speech I gave at the rally, following the procession of campaigners in orange jumpsuits from Old Palace Yard, by the Houses of Parliament, through Parliament Square, and up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.

My speech followed a brave and principled speech by Apsana Begum MP, which is available on X here, where, I’m glad to note, it has had nearly 20,000 views, and I was followed by a number of UK Guantánamo Network campaigners — Aaron Humphrey-May, Harry McWhirter, Lise Rossi and Dave Esbester, whose speeches are available on Canva and filmed by Melissa Schweizer, as well as a poem read out by another campaigner.

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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.

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Wednesday December 6 was a big day for Guantánamo activism, as it marked 8,000 days since the prison opened, and also coincided with the date for the latest global vigils, calling for the closure of Guantánamo, which I initiated in February, and which have been taking place across the US, in London, Mexico City, and elsewhere, every month since.

To mark 8,000 wretched and unforgivably long days of the prison’s existence, I encouraged anti-Guantánamo campaigners around the world to take a photo with the 8,000 days poster, hosted on the Gitmo Clock website, an initiative of the Close Guantánamo campaign, which I established nearly 12 years ago, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo.

The Gitmo Clock has been counting, in real time, how long Guantánamo has been open for nearly six years, since the 16th anniversary of the prison’s opening, on January 11, 2018, when the lamentable Donald Trump was president, and when the prison had been open for 5,845 days.

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Sometimes, when darkness is all around, just one small ray of light is sufficient to keep hope alive.

A week ago, on November 15, amidst the almost all-encompassing darkness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, that small ray of light was provided when former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi was welcomed into the Palace of Westminster, the home of the British Parliament, by Chris Law, the SNP (Scottish National Party) MP for Dundee East, who is the co-chair of the recently established All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Closure of the Guantánamo Detention Facility.

Mansoor — the very definition of human irrepressibility — was held for over 14 years at Guantánamo before being resettled in Serbia in July 2016, where his outspoken nature and complaints about his treatment (which included a ban on travelling outside Serbia) led, for many years, to harassment and intimidation from the Serbian authorities.

This is a situation that only slowly began to change when he started having articles published in the New York Times, related to his involvement in “Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay”, a significant exhibition of artwork by current and former prisoners at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which ran from October 2017 to January 2018.

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On Wednesday September 6, the latest monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo took place in ten locations worldwide — London, Washington, D.C., Mexico City, Detroit, Cobleskill, NY, Brussels and Copenhagen, and with San Francisco and Saratoga Springs, NY joining us for the first time. Aaron Tovo held a solitary vigil in Minneapolis, after some last-minute cancellations, although no one was there to photograph him, and campaigners in New York City have delayed their vigil to September 13.

The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and began in February, when I asked friends and colleagues across the US, and in Mexico City, Brussels and Copenhagen, to join the monthly vigils for the prison’s closure that campaigners in London had been undertaking since September last year, drawing on a long tradition of Guantánamo vigils outside the Houses of Parliament.

For the development of the vigils, please see my reports from March, April, May, June, July and August, all accompanied by numerous photos.

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