Yo!!!! Close Guantanamo NOW Tour January 2014 Andy Worthington & Debra Sweet Address How & Why the U.S. has Kept this Illegal Prison Open for 12 years, and Our Responsibility to Close It. Close Guantanamo Protest The Bush regime filled the off-shore prison at Guantanamo Bay by rendering men seized from around the globe into indefinite captivity, employing and legally justifying a program of torture they called enhanced interrogation. Even Bushs team slowly began to release hundreds of prisoners for whom no case could be fabricated to justify prison. When Barack Obama was elected, he quickly promised to close it within a year...five years ago. Its still open, with new infrastructure added, and more personnel than ever. Most people in the U.S. have no idea there are still 82 prisoners there who were cleared for release years ago; 45 who the President says will never be charged or released; and military commissions trials are designed to cover the torture inflicted on the prisoners, depriving of them rights the U.S. has claimed to cherish. Why, as the war on terror is said to be winding down, will this country not close Guantanamo? And what is our responsibility to see that it does? Andy Worthington, a journalist based in the U.K., has covered the prison intensely since 2006. In hundreds of articles, beginning when very little was known about the prisoners, hes uncovered the lives of the men held without charge, and the stories the U.S. created about them. Author of The Guantanamo Files: Stories of the 774 Men Held in Guantanamo, and in his 2009 film Outside the Law, Andy further developed the picture by sifting through the Guantanamo Detainee Briefs released via Wikileaks by Private Manning in 2011. Debra Sweet is the Director of The World Cant Wait, organizer of years of programs & protests of indefinite detention and torture by the United States, including a full page ad in The New York Times in May 2013 picturing Guantanamo prisoners for the first time in those pages, and bringing together prisoners attorneys, academics, artists, and voices of conscience to declare “Close Guantanamo NOW.” Jeff Kaye, Michael Kearns, Jason Leopold, and Todd Pierece will join Andy and Debra for specific dates. Details forthcoming... Thursday January 9: NYC Film: Doctors of the Darkside with Andy Worthington, Todd Pierce, former U.S. military defense attorney for Guantanamo prisoners. Friday January 10: Washington, DC 6:00 pm Film: Doctors of the Darkside, with Andy Worthington and Debra Sweet at Busboys and Poets with Todd PIerece. January 11: Washington, DC 12 noon Close Guantanamo Now Protest at the White House with Witness Against Torture, January 12-14: San Francisco Bay Area: Stanford University & UC Hastings Law School January 15-18: Los Angeles & San Diego with Interfaith Communities Untied for Justice & Peace, and at UC San Diego & CSU Pomona This ambitious tour will not be a success without YOUR contribution. The “new normals” of our world are not acceptable. “It is up to the people to stand up for principle and morality when their institutions and public officials refuse to do so.”
Posted on: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 13:32:33 +0000
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