Download the Close Guantanamo Info Flyer PDF here.
SHUT DOWN GUANTÁNAMO
What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think it’s wrong. -President Jimmy Carter
Here in front of the Augusta Armory, we call attention to the utter wrongness of the Muslim prison in Guantanamo Bay.
January 11, 2025 is the twenty-third anniversary of the prison’s opening, where prisoners continue to be imprisoned indefinitely without charge. We call on our government to close the prison. It was one of many secret “black sites” around the globe where prisoners whom the U.S. military and CIA believed terrorists were disappeared and tortured. Secret Justice Department memoranda redefined the meaning of torture and U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions to allow prisoners to be tortured and otherwise abused at these sites with impunity. For more than four years Guantánamo operated in secret, with no one knowing who was imprisoned there. It wasn’t until May 2006 that the prisoners’ names at Guantánamo were finally disclosed. And it wasn’t until April 2009 that the secret Justice Department memoranda were made public.
By then, 780 men and boys, all of them Muslim, had been imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. The vast majority – 86 percent – were sold to the U.S. for a bounty, typically $5,000. Currently, 26 men remain imprisoned at Guantánamo, 17 of whom have never been charged with any crime or offense and are held indefinitely, in violation of international law. Adding to their injury, 14 of these 17 have been approved for release but are still held.
Secret prisons, torture, indefinite detention without charge, and secrecy are signs of a nation undergoing spiritual death. Twenty-three years of Guantánamo is shameful! We must make amends as a nation for the torture, killings, and many terrible wrongs we have done, and are still doing, to the prisoners held at Guantánamo and elsewhere from the wars we support. We vigil here today in solidarity with them.
Here is what you can do to get involved and inform yourself:
Organizations to contact:
• Close Guantánamo: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk
• No More Guantánamos: https://www.nogitmos.org/
• September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: www.peacefultomorrows.org
• Amnesty International: www.amnestyusa.org
Films to watch:
• The Mauritanian
• Guantánamo Diary Revisited (sequel to The Mauritanian)
• Taxi to the Dark Side
• Guantánamo’s Child: Omar Khadr
Books to read:
• Mohamedou Ould Slahi, The Mauritanian (Back Bay Books 2020 (restored ed.)
• Mansoor Aydefi, Don’t Forget Us Here (Hachette Books 2021)
• Jérôme Tubiana, Guantánamo Kid (SelfMadeHero 2019 (illustrated)
• Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (Anchor Books 2009)
• Nazia Kazi, Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman & Littlefield 2021 (updated ed.))
Get Involved:
Write or Call the White House: Tell President Biden that all the men cleared for release from the Guantánamo Bay prison should be transferred immediately to countries where their human rights will be respected. Call or email today: www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call
Support the Guantanamo Survivors Fund: Over 750 men have been transferred out of Guantánamo. Many still face significant hurdles to resuming a normal life, including mental and medical problems caused during their detention, lack of access to decent health care, inability to work because of ill health, and the social stigma of having been in Guantánamo. The Guantanamo Survivors Fund provides immediate short-term support for their most urgent needs. Learn more and donate to the Guantanamo Survivors Fund www.nogitmos.org
Write to the men who are still in Guantánamo: See more information at www.witnessagainsttorture.com (flyer – 1//3/2025)
