World Can't Wait

With Your Help! Close Guantanamo NOW Ad to Appear in The New York Times

Call to Action

An irresistible and irrepressible demand must well up from the people that Obama close Guantanamo and end torture. The hunger strike has now passed 100 days. We have raised almost $40,000 of the $52,030 needed to run this ad. Please donate generously and sign the statement.

As the ad states, “It is up to the people to stand up for principle and morality when their institutions and public officials refuse to do so. The fates of those who are maimed or killed by our government's policies are inextricably intertwined with our own; we must listen and respond to their cry for justice.”

Why Obama Can & Should Close Guantanamo NOW

Obama

While promoting the message to Close Guantanamo that we are raising funds to publish in The New York Times, we  have been hearing, especially in the Twitterverse, that people think, because Obama promised to close Guantanamo, and says that Congress is not allowing him to do that, the main problem is with Congress.

New Guantanamo policy: Genital “pat down”

Torture and Detention

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – A new policy has been implemented at Guantanamo that calls for prisoners to submit to a “pat down” of their genitals and buttocks when they leave the detention camps to meet with their lawyers, an official here confirmed Tuesday.

Navy Captain. Robert Durand, a Guantanamo spokesman, told Al Jazeera the new procedures were introduced about two weeks ago in an effort to stave off the alleged flow of “contraband” into the detention camps. It’s one of several new strict protocols that went into effect at the detention facility since February.

Statements from Signers of the Close Guantanamo Ad

Torture and Detention

The following statements were made by signatories to the Close Guantanamo ad which will be placed in The New York Times.

Like you and many others, I have given a great deal of thought to what can be done to encourage the Obama Administration to release from Gitmo as many persons as possible within the framework of existing legislation and to ultimately close it. This concern has only been heightened by the hunger strike in which a reported 130 men held at Guantanamo are engaged in.

“Torture is for Torture, the System is for the System”: Shaker Aamer’s Letters from Guantánamo

Torture and Detention

The quote in the title of this article is from 1984 (aka Nineteen Eighty-Four), George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, published in June 1949, which Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, described as being “probably the book I’ve read more than any other but the Holy Koran” in a recent letter to his family from Guantánamo.

An Urgent Note About the Global Days of Action to Shut Down Guantanamo May 17th–May 19th

Torture and Detention

As the 100th day of the Guantanamo Hunger Strike approaches it is important that there be a strong visible presence in the streets during the May 17^th–May19th Global Days of Action to Shut Down Guantanamo. In London and other places like Ontario there have already been plans made. Here in the U.S., Chicago, Staten Island, and Boston have already listed their events. Plans for New York, San Francisco and other places are soon to come.

Death is Preferable to Life at Obama’s Guantanamo

Torture and Detention

More than 100 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are starving themselves to death. Twenty-three of them are being force-fed. “They strap you to a chair, tie up your wrists, your legs, your forehead and tightly around the waist,” Fayiz Al-Kandari told his lawyer, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard. Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti held at Guantanamo for 11 years, has never been charged with a crime.

Bay Area Protests Against Guantanamo, John Yoo and Eric Holder

Press Coverage

Indymedia: Escaped Guantanamo Prisoners Spotted on BART

Inspired by an action organized by the London Guantanamo Campaign, anti-torture activists boarded BART trains on Saturday wearing the iconic orange jumpsuits and black hoods associated with detainees at Guantanamo. Somewhat ironically, the hooded prisoners read a newspaper filled with news about the prisoners' hunger strike, which after two months has finally succeeded in doing what none of us have been able to do for the last 11 years - awaken public awareness and discussion of the ethical and legal problems of holding people indefinitely with no charges.