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Theatrical protest in Times Square, NYC, this
spring to support hunger strike of Guantanamo prisoners
Welcome,
readers of The New York Times. We are proud to have crowd-funded an ad in
the May 23 which got your attention and put the demand to Close Guantanamo
before millions, and before the Obama administration as the president spoke
Thursday on the issue.
TV.MSNBC.com:
Over a Thousand
Activists Sign Full-Page Ad to Close Guantanamo
MichaelMoore.com:
“DO
SOMETHING:Close Guantánamo
Now!
Read and join Michael Moore, Oliver Stone,
Alice Walker,
Noam Chomsky, Brig. Gen. (Ret) Janis Karpinski
and many
more in signing this statement”
We thank Medea Benjamin, who signed our
collective message, for challenging President Obama during his speech Thursday
to use his executive authority to close Guantanamo immediately and to stop
targeted killing. She specifically criticized the killing of Abdul Rahman
al-Aulaqi, the 16 year old American citizen killed in a drone attack in Yemen.
(VIDEO)
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Alfred,
The powerful Close Guantanamo NOW
message signed now by 1700 people including notable artists and
writers, appeared in The New York Times just before President Obama spoke
Thursday on how he will carry forward a “just” war, normalizing, and in some
ways escalating U.S. use of targeted assassination and indefinite detention.
In light of the president's speech, our
message is more relevant than ever, and we have to publish it more widely.
The just
demands in it have not been met.
Guantanamo:
106 days into the prisoners’ hunger strike, the president said he still
wants to close Guantanamo (but did not say he would) and “will lift the
ban” on releasing the Yemeni prisoners (for which he gave no timetable, and
expressed no urgency). Most dangerously, he appeared to endorse continued
indefinite detention and the use of grossly unfair military commissions,
instead of charging and trying the men with civil judicial
process.
We said, Close Guantanamo NOW, immediately release
cleared prisoners, and end the use of indefinite detention. See In Guantanamo, Fine Words are
No Substitute for Freedom by journalist Andy Worthington, one of our
signers. Marjorie Cohn, an expert on international law, points out that
even though Obama mentioned force-feeding and asked, “Is that who we are,”
“...Obama failed to note that the United Nations
Human Rights Commission determined in 2006 that the violent force-feeding of
detainees at Guantanamo amounted to torture and that he has continued that
policy.”
At best,
the prospects of closing Guantanamo are back to those of 2008, when candidate
Obama promised to do so. So much depends on us escalating the outcry and
demand for justice. Here's what you can do
now.
Learn more about the
prisoners and the hidden history of the
detention center built to avoid U.S. law.
Guantanamo is a torture camp from which the only exit for the last two years was
in a coffin. Thursday, attorney Clive Stafford Smith tweeted that his
client from Tunisia, Adel Hamlily, just made a suicide attempt, prompted by the
sexual humiliation of genital searches guards recently began on the Guantanamo
prisoners.
His organization, Reprieve (based in the UK), issued a press
release yesterday titled, “Obama fails to provide any meaningful assistance
to suffering Guantanamo detainees.” Prisoners are foregoing their right to phone
calls with family or lawyers in order to avoid the sexual assaults which
accompany them: “Many prisoners now describe their treatment in the camp as
being worse than under President George W. Bush.”
Moazzam Begg, a British
prisoner freed in 2004, said on Thursday that the prisoners are:
“...primarily striking for their freedom, for being
held for so long without charge or trial - but they’re also striking for being
given these invasive cavity searches every time their lawyer visits, and every
time he leaves, for the desecration of the Koran, for the strip searches, for
the food and all of these things that they’ve had to bear over the past eleven
years. And until they actually get to see the plane that is going to be taking
them home, and even then they’ll be skeptical, I don’t think they’ll be stopping
their protest any time soon.”
Help Spread the
Close Guantanamo Message.
Obama's real promise: expanded targeted
killing via drones.
Obama
defended broad executive authority to kill targets, perhaps even more widely
than he has previously. His speech amounted to an argument for, and announcement
of a permanent infrastructure for assassination. As the McClatchy
newspaper put it,
“In every previous
speech, interview and congressional testimony, Obama and his top aides have said
that drone strikes are restricted to killing confirmed ‘senior operational
leaders of al Qaida and associated forces’ plotting imminent violent attacks
against the United States.
“But Obama dropped that wording Thursday,
making no reference at all to senior operational leaders. While saying that the
United States is at war with al Qaida and its associated forces, he used a
variety of descriptions of potential targets, from ‘those who want to kill us’
and ‘terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat’ to ‘all potential
terrorist targets.’”
A year
ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said in regards to targeted killing that “due
process and judicial process are not one and the same.” He and Obama argue that
“due process” is whatever they, and their closest advisors, perhaps overseen by
some in Congress, say it is. This is actually worse than the Bush
standard in its promotion of extra-legal and extra-judicial
means.
Only in this country (with the biggest military
in world history) could it seem legitimate to debate whether large occupying
armies or stealth cross-border assassinations with mass incineration would more
alienate local populations. But war for empire, no matter the strategy or
tactics, is illegitimate, immoral and unjust. As we said in the ad published
this week, “Actions that utilize de facto torture, that run roughshod over the
rule of law and due process, and that rain down terror and murder on peoples and
nations, amount to war
crimes.”
See:
“Is that who we
are?” Obama’s Speech on Drones and Preventive and Indefinite
Detention by my colleague Dennis Loo who wrote the Close
Guantanamo ad.
We must show the world there is a section of people in
the U.S. who care about humanity. Donate to help publish this
message as soon as possible internationally, and in alternative
media. We have been offered very substantial discounts to publish in the
International Herald Tribue and The Progressive. Whether we can
publish there quickly — or in other online or print
media — depends entirely on you. |
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