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On Wednesday July 2, the latest “First Wednesday” global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place — four in the US, three in Europe, and one in Mexico City. An additional US vigil took place on Saturday July 5.

Please see the photos below, and read on for my analysis of the importance of the vigils, not only for the men still held, but also to highlight how, since Donald Trump came back to the White House, it has become increasingly apparent that the core injustice of Guantánamo — holding men indefinitely without charge or trial, and without providing any evidence for doing so — is being shamefully and cynically repurposed to justify detentions in the “war on migrants” that he declared when he took office in January.

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On Wednesday June 4, campaigners across the US — in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit — and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, held the latest “First Wednesday” coordinated vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay. In Belgrade, former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi held a solo vigil, and on Saturday June 7, campaigners in Cobleskill, NY rounded off the week of actions with a defiant protest in the rain.

I can’t express sufficiently my admiration for the small but big-hearted global family of activists who come out together once a month to defy the collective amnesia that, for the most part, has engulfed Guantánamo throughout most of the 23 wretched years of its existence. Many thanks to those involved, from various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, as well as numerous other supporting groups.

Please see below for photos of the vigils, and read on for my assessment of why it remains important to campaign for Guantánamo’s closure — including the performative cruelty of Donald Trump’s use of the prison in his horrendous “war on migrants,” and how, inadvertently, he has demonstrated that the prison itself, although still holding 15 men, has become politically irrelevant, furthering arguments for its 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. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

On Wednesday May 7, for the 28th successive month, a global family of dedicated campaigners held vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay at nine locations across the US and around the world — Washington, D.C., London, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Mexico City, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Portland, OR — with Cobleskill, NY holding an additional vigil on Saturday May 10.

I’m immensely proud of, and grateful for the dedication of our global family of campaigners — from various Amnesty International groups, and representatives of other groups including the Close Guantánamo campaign, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait and the UK Guantánamo Network — for continuing to shine a light on the lawlessness of Guantánamo, in the face of widespread amnesia or indifference.

This month’s London vigil, in particular, was noteworthy, as campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network, who have been working assiduously with MPs and peers to reestablish an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Guantánamo’s closure, invited members of the APPG to show support by visiting the vigil for a photo opportunity, and five MPs and peers took a break from their busy schedules to join us — Chris Law of the SNP, the chair of the APPG, Baroness Natalie Bennett of the Green Party, John McDonnell and Andy Slaughter of the Labour Party, and Brian Mathew, a Liberal Democrat.

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On Wednesday April 2, campaigners across the US and around the world — in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, London, Brussels, Detroit and Phoenix, AZ — held the latest coordinated monthly vigils (the “First Wednesday” vigils) calling for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay and for Donald Trump to stop using the prison — and the wider naval base on which it is located — to hold migrants facing deportation from the US. Organizations involved include various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture and the World Can’t Wait, with support from numerous other organizations.

Through illness or other commitments, three other vigils — in Mexico City, Portland, OR and Los Angeles — didn’t take place, while the vigil in Cobleskill, NY was moved to Saturday April 5, to coincide with the “Hands Off” rallies against Trump and Elon Musk taking place at over 1,400 locations across the US, attended by an estimated three million people.

Photos from the vigils are posted below, and please read on for some context about the vigils, their history, and their relevance.

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On Wednesday (March 5), the latest “First Wednesday” vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay — and for Donald Trump to stop using it as part of his cruel and illegal “war on migrants” — took place across the US, in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland, OR, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, AZ, and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, with a vigil in Cobleskill, NY taking place this Saturday, March 8. Organizations involved include various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture and the World Can’t Wait.

Check out the photos below, and please read on for the history of the vigils, and for the shocking resurgence of Guantánamo under Donald Trump, and for explanations of why his shameful use of the naval base and the prison must be resisted.

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Last Wednesday (February 5), the monthly “First Wednesday” global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay resumed, taking place for the first time under the darkening shadow of Donald Trump’s chaotic but malevolent reach.

While we had all presumed that Guantánamo and its remaining 15 prisoners might be largely ignored by Trump, making our continuing efforts to keep shining a light on the prison all the more important, he surprised us all by doing the exact opposite, dragging Guantánamo into the global spotlight by proposing to send migrants there as part of the cynical and malevolent “war on migrants” that he initiated as soon as he took office.

Trump’s plan initially focused on a massive expansion of an existing facility used since the 1990s to temporarily hold migrants intercepted at sea, and declaring that it would hold 30,000 migrants. This was alarming enough, because he had not sought Congressional approval or funding for this project, which, moreover, clearly had no defensible legal basis.

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Saturday January 11 marked another gruesome and unforgivable milestone in the US’s ongoing long war on law and fundamental human decency — the 23rd anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, where, despite recent positive developments (the release of 15 men), another 15 are still held in varying states of lawlessness.

To mark the occasion, groups across the US and around the world, who have been admirably and diligently taking part in monthly coordinated “First Wednesday” vigils for the last two years calling for the prison’s closure, shifted the dates of their vigils to the anniversary — although normal service will be resumed next month, on Wednesday February 5.

Below are photos of the vigils in Washington, D.C., London, New York, San Francisco, Cobleskill, NY and Detroit. A planned vigil in Los Angeles had to be called off because of the wildfires, and other groups held vigils on other days — Portland, OR on January 1, and Mexico City on January 8 — with the vigil outside the European Parliament in Brussels taking place this coming Thursday, January 16. Groups involved include various Amnesty International groups, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, Close Guantánamo, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the UK Guantánamo Network, and many other groups, with other organizations also supporting the vigils on an ongoing basis.

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UPDATE: Just after I posted this article, the news broke that eleven of the 14 men approved for release from Guantánamo have been resettled in Oman. My article celebrating this news will be published tomorrow, but the photo campaign and the vigils will, of course, be proceeding as planned, because 15 men are still held — three who have also long been approved for release, three “forever prisoners”, never charged, but never approved for release either, and nine others in the military commissions trial system. Here’s my article about the release of these eleven men, containing more information than you’ll find in the mainstream media!

With the plight of 14 men who have long been approved for release from Guantánamo but are still held dominating the thoughts of those of us who have spent years — or decades — calling for the prison’s closure, this coming week — which includes the 23rd anniversary of the prison’s opening, on Saturday January 11 — is a crucial time for highlighting the need for urgent action from the Biden administration, in the last few weeks before Donald Trump once more occupies the White House, bringing with him, no doubt, a profound antipathy towards any of the men still held, and a hunger for sealing the prison shut as he did during his first term in office.

This Thursday, January 9, marks 8,400 days since the prison opened, and, as I’ve been doing every 100 days for the last seven years, I’m encouraging people across the US and around the world to show their solidarity with the men still held by taking a photo with the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking this grim milestone, and calling for the prison’s closure. The poster is here, and please send your photo here. If you don’t have a printer, you can bring up the poster on a phone, or on a tablet or laptop, and get someone to take a photo with their phone.

Normally, I also produce a separate poster marking the number of days that Guantánamo has been open on the anniversary of its opening, but this year, because the anniversary falls just two days after 8,400 days, I’m encouraging everyone holding vigils on January 11 to print off the 8,400 days poster and to use that. After 8,400 days, two days really make very little difference at all.

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If you have the time and the inclination, please check out my latest interview with my colleague Andy Bungay, posted below as a YouTube podcast, and originally broadcast, as the latest in an ongoing series of monthly interviews, during Andy’s shows last Saturday and Sunday on Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, in south west London, and subsequently made available on his Mixcloud page here and here. I’m pleased to note that Andy also played the latest live recordings by my band The Four Fathers, as well as ‘They Don’t Care’, the latest online single by my son Tyler, the beatboxer and singer known as The Wiz-RD.

In a freewheeling 80-minute discussion, we focused on some of the many profoundly dispiriting events dominating our lives as 2024 draws to a close — the imminent return as the US president of Donald Trump, the ongoing genocidal carnage being inflicted by Israel on the trapped Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and the growing menace of catastrophic climate change.

All are thoroughly depressing topics, of course, but unlike last month, when my discussion with Andy, available here as ‘World on Fire: Gaza, Climate Collapse and the Collective Derangement of Western Politicians’, was rather dark (almost certainly because of the intensity of Israel’s “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza), this month’s conversation was threaded through with resistance and hope.

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On Wednesday, December 4, campaigners across the US and around the world held the latest coordinated monthly vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The vigils began in February 2023, taking place on the first Wednesday of every month, and, as a result, they have become known, amongst some of the organizers, as the “First Wednesday vigils.”

Photos from the vigils are posted below, as is a detailed description of why this month’s vigils, in particular, were so important.

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