Close the USA’s Torture Camp at Guantanamo NOW! End Indefinite Detention!
May 23rd Global Day of Action
Across the globe, the word “Guantánamo” has come to mean torture, unjust detention, brutality, and inhumane degradation. The prison camp was intended not just to imprison captives but to send a message to the entire world that the U.S. could do whatever it wants to whomever it wants.
Why is this torture prison still open? President Obama said twice that he plans to close it, but in more than 5 years has taken no substantial actions to do so, even though legally he could close it today.
In 2002, the Bush regime set up a primitive prison camp at a U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Several hundred men of the 774 there were subjected to “enhanced interrogation,” which the rest of the world calls “torture.” Most had been turned in for $5,000 cash bounties the U.S. paid, and had no connection to attacks on the U.S.
There are 154 men still in Guantanamo. 124 have never been charged; 77 of those were cleared for transfer years ago. In 2010 Obama blocked the release of 57 of those men already “cleared” because they are from Yemen. The U.S. government says it doesn’t have evidence to charge most of the rest. It won’t put them on trial, presumably because they were tortured. And it won’t release them, making there imprisonment without charges “forever.”
Guantanamo prisoners are desperately trying to get the world’s attention about their detention by refusing to eat, some of them for many years.
25 cities around the world and counting!
Find or start an action near you:
witnesstorture.org/events
The Obama administration uses the U.S. Army to force feed the striking prisoners, a brutal procedure in which a tube is shoved into the nose and liquids are pumped down the throat while prisoners are strapped down in a chair. The United Nations Human Rights Commission, The World Medical Association, and the American Medical Association denounce force feeding as torture and/or unethical.
One thing is clear to people of conscience: Obama must close Guantanamo now! We must do all we can to create a political situation where Obama releases the cleared prisoners immediately and closes Guantanamo. It was always wrong and no government should be able to create such torture camps.
Download this statement as a flier.
Read/download in Spanish.
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