January, 03 2017, 02:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
AIUSA media office,Email:,media@aiusa.org,Phone: 202-544-0200 x302
Amnesty International USA Launches Aggressive Guantanamo Closure Campaign In Obama's Final Days
As President Obama begins the final days of his presidency, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) launched an aggressive effort urging him to use all the powers of his office to close Guantanamo before his term ends. With an open letter to the president, a hard-hitting bus shelter ad campaign targeting key locations in Washington, D.C., online advertising and a coalition White House rally planned for Guantanamo's 15th anniversary on Jan.
WASHINGTON
As President Obama begins the final days of his presidency, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) launched an aggressive effort urging him to use all the powers of his office to close Guantanamo before his term ends. With an open letter to the president, a hard-hitting bus shelter ad campaign targeting key locations in Washington, D.C., online advertising and a coalition White House rally planned for Guantanamo's 15th anniversary on Jan. 11, Amnesty is seeking to move Obama to action before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
"Amnesty International USA is mobilizing its 1.2 million grassroots supporters and all others who stand for human rights to tell President Obama that Guantanamo cannot be left to President-elect Trump," said Margaret Huang, executive director of AIUSA. "We are incredibly concerned about human rights in the upcoming Trump administration, and that includes the president-elect's promise to expand Guantanamo's population. We cannot risk letting this institution of injustice become permanent. President Obama must act boldly now and do all he can in the time left to fulfill his promise to close Guantanamo."
Amnesty's bus shelter and online ads feature an image of the Statue of Liberty in a crowd of people, all clad in Guantanamo's notorious orange jumpsuits, with the message "Don't Leave Guantanamo to Trump." The ad points to Amnesty's online action telling President Obama to finish the job and shut down Guantanamo for good. The ads will run in D.C. for several weeks, through the end of Obama's administration.
Details on the Jan. 11 rally, a coalition effort with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve, Veterans for Peace, Witness Against Torture, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and others are forthcoming.
The open letter sent today to Obama from Huang reads, in part:
"Despite your positive actions to date, your legacy will include failing to cure this corruption of our country's ideals of justice and fairness. You will leave behind Guantanamo as a system of injustice that--having survived for 15 years, two political parties and four presidential terms of office--may remain open for the foreseeable future.
Our concern is heightened by the sharp rise in anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric during the election. Proposals for large-scale detention without charge, which once seemed inconceivable, are now on the table as options your successor may pursue. Guantanamo, with its shameful tradition of secrecy and insularity from legal process, would be all too convenient a location for mass imprisonment, returning the United States to one of its grimmest chapters.
"...You began your presidency with an executive order to end the Guantanamo detentions and to close the detention camp there.We urge you to end it with bold action to realize your promise."
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
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"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
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When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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