The Bush regime set up a detention camp on Guantanamo in January 2002, designed deliberately to be out of reach of U.S. and international laws, as part of its “war on terror.” 779 Muslim men were detained, almost all held for years with no charges. Nine died there; 735 have been released without apology or reparations. 21 of the remaining have been “cleared” for release, many of those when Obama was president. Three of the remaining are called “forever” prisoners whom the government will never charge nor release because to do so would reveal the torture methods the government developed on them. Very few were ever found guilty of a crime and none received legal due process.
The open violations of human and legal rights of those detained — secret “renditions,” torture by third country allies, “enhanced interrogation,” via the CIA — shocked the world. And yet, the U.S. has upgraded Guantanamo.
Download: Poster and GITMO-Clock
We gather on the 21st anniversary of this torture camp to say:
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Close Guantanamo NOW
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End indefinite detention without trial, allow prisoners to defend themselves
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Immediate release and repatriation to join their families for 21 men who have been “cleared” for years
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Health care and financial support for those men who have been “freed” but unjustly denied years of their lives through detention outside the law
New York Public Library (On the Steps)
5th Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018 US
This event will benefit the Guantanamo Survivors Fund which provides money for medical care, rent, language classes, tuition and job training for those prisoners “freed” but left without resources after being unjustly detained by the U.S. Bring cash/checks or make donations on line at the rally. Join us to hear from experts on the prisoners’ situation, to participate in street theater and song.
Sponsored by: World Can’t Wait, Witness Against Torture, NYC War Resisters League; Peace Action NY State, Veterans for Peace NYC Chapter 34, Brooklyn For Peace, Pax Christi NYS, NYC Democratic Socialists of America (The Anti-War Working Group Organizing Committee), Veterans For Peace Chapter 113-Hawaii, World Beyond War, Raging Grannies, Granny Peace Brigade NYC, Veterans For Peace Chapter 90, Broome County Peace Action, September Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows, Uptown Progressive Action, Code Pink
Organized by Veterans for Peace Hawai`i, World Can’t Wait Hawai`i
Organized by NC Stop Torture Now
International Events:
Why Is Guantanamo Still Open?
Friday, January 6, 7:30 am PST
Featuring Interfaith Communities United for Justice & Peace member and “Close Guantanamo” event organizer Jon Krampner and the Rev. Ron Stief of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Mohammad Tajsar of the ACLU of Southern California, and Michael Rapkin, a member of the Guantanamo Bar.
Host: CodePink. Endorsers (list in formation), Berkeley No More Guantanamos, Progressive Democrats of America Oakland, Triple Justice, Extinction Rebellion Peace
This action is on the 21st anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay and will highlight Professor John Yoo’s complicity in U.S. torture. Yoo provided erroneous legal cover for the U.S. military and CIA to torture captured men, most of whom have never been charged with crimes yet spent years at Guantanamo where they were treated inhumanely and tortured. There are less than 40 remaining prisoners. Professor Yoo should be prosecuted, not teaching law at our public university. We’ve invited Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky to speak. In 2014 Chemerinsky, then Dean of UC Irvine Law School, said in Nation magazine and in a KPFK interview that Yoo should be prosecuted: “I think he [John Yoo] should be,” Chemerinsky said. “All who planned, all who implemented, all who carried out the torture should be criminally prosecuted. How else do we as a society express our outrage? How else do we deter it in the future, except by criminal prosecutions?”