In the long struggle to close Guantánamo, protests took place in Washington D.C. and across America on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison on January 11, and the newly established “Close Guantánamo” campaign (of which I am a member of the steering committee) launched a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, calling on President Obama to fulfill his promise to close the prison, which he made when he took office three years ago, and pointing out how fundamentally unjust it is that 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners have been cleared for release, and yet are still held.
That petition needs to secure 25,000 signatures by February 6, to oblige the President to respond, and at the time of writing, over 4,300 people had signed it. Many groups have been asking their supporters to sign it, and yesterday the Center for Constitutional Rights publicly added their voice to the campaign, sending out an email alert to all their supporters, asking them to sign the petition, and also asking visitors to the “Close Guantánamo” page on their website to sign it.
The embedded clock (below) was also created by CCR, and, in further publicity, three videos featuring speeches made outside the Supreme Court on January 11 — by Andy Worthington, by conscientious objector Daniel Lakemacher, who worked as a guard at Guantánamo, and by CCR’s executive director Vince Warren — have also been made available on CCR’s “Close Guantánamo” page, and are posted below.
I’d like to thank CCR for their support, and, in conclusion, if you haven’t yet signed the petition, please do so, and please also forward it to ten of your friends and family members. Time is running out, and we need 2,000 signatures a day for the next ten days to show that we care about the closure of Guantánamo, and that we are not prepared to put up with any more excuses from the administration or from members of Congress.
Andy Worthington Demanding Justice at Guantánamo and Around the World from Center for Constitutional Rights on Vimeo.
Daniel Jared Lakemacher Demanding Justice at Guantánamo and Around the World from Center for Constitutional Rights on Vimeo.
Vince Warren Demanding Justice at Guantánamo and Around the World from Center for Constitutional Rights on Vimeo.
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Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK).