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witness against torture
A Most Unhappy New Year at Guantanamo
Dec 31, 2015
As the clock counts down to the New Year and the world welcomes 2016, another clock will continue ticking, counting the days, hours, minutes and seconds since May 23, 2013, the day President Barack Obama promised to free all those prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay who have been cleared for release.
That clock was created by independent journalist Andy Worthington and is on the Internet at gtmoclock.com. Jan. 22, will mark the seventh anniversary of the day Obama signed Executive Order 13492, ordering the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison within one year.
As Obama's time in the White House winds down, the prospects of closing the notorious gulag grow bleaker. Currently there are 107 men imprisoned there, 48 of whom have been cleared for release for almost six years. While the Republican-led Congress has long thwarted efforts to close the island prison, Reuters recently reported that the Pentagon itself, which is supposed to be under the civilian control of Commander-in-Chief Obama, may be resisting the order to close Guantanamo.
Obama's executive order in 2009 created the Guantanamo Review Task Force, chaired by then-Attorney General Eric Holder. It included representatives from the Departments of Justice, Defense, State, Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All prisoners cleared for release have received unanimous consent from those authorities. While some of those prisoners have been released, it shocks the conscience to think that scores of men are suffering indefinite detention with no charges against them, many held for more than a decade.
Tariq Ba Odah is one of those men who was cleared for release. "He was assigned to Guantanamo in February of 2002. He's nearing the 14-year mark of indefinite detention, nearly nine years of that time on hunger strike and detained in solitary confinement," his attorney, Omar Farah of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told us on the Democracy Now! news hour. "The president has to insist that the Department of Defense and all other agencies fall in line behind what he says is his objective and ensure that Mr. Ba Odah is released immediately."
The hunger strike Farah described has reduced Tariq Ba Odah to a shadow of his former self. "I visited Mr. Ba Odah in March and April of this year and found him in utterly disastrous physical condition," Omar Farah said. "According to the government, not me, Mr. Ba Odah is just 74 and a half pounds, and that's 56 percent of his safe body weight." Ba Odah is forcibly fed twice daily through a nose tube. The force with which the U.S. military jailers insert the tube causes extreme pain, and has been deemed torture by the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Tariq Ba Odah is from Yemen, but, because of the civil war there, the Obama administration will not release Yemenis directly to their home nation. Farah told us: "There is a foreign country, a third country, ready to accept him and help provide him medical care and rehabilitate him. This is a person who's desperately, desperately ill. And the last step of that negotiated release, it seems, is the simple task of forwarding his medical records." The Pentagon refuses to release his medical records, citing privacy rules. "That's a lie. And it's a bad lie," Farah told us. "I sat with Mr. Ba Odah while he provided his informed written consent to release his medical records to me as his counsel and also for the specific purpose of negotiating his release."
Reuters reporters Charles Levinson and David Rohde (the former New York Times reporter who was held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan for seven months, until he escaped) cite Ba Odah's case in their latest article, writing, "Pentagon officials have been throwing up bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president's plan to close Guantanamo."
While the Pentagon says it will release the first of 17 prisoners in January, you never know. However, what you can be sure of, like clockwork, peace activists from Witness Against Torture, wearing orange jumpsuits like the Guantanamo prisoners, will vigil as they do every Jan. 22 to mark the anniversary of Obama's executive order to close Guantanamo.
Last Thanksgiving, a delegation from Witness Against Torture went to Cuba, within view of the U.S. base, to hold a symbolic "Forced-Feeding, Not Feasting at Guantanamo." They described their action: "Twelve persons, all fasting for the day, sat at a table in front of empty plates to represent the terrible pain endured by hunger strikers, past and present, at Guantanamo. At the head of the table, one member dressed as a detained man sat in front of the terrible apparatus of forced feeding." They also wore orange jumpsuits, and each spoke about their reasons for coming. After each speaker, the group sang:
"Courage, Muslim brother
You do not walk alone
We will walk with you
And sing your spirit home."
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Flowers from Guantanamo
Dec 21, 2015
Here in Kabul, young friends with the Afghan Peace Volunteers look forward to learning more about "The Tea Project" in late December, when Aaron Hughes arrives, an artist, a U.S. military veteran, and a core member of Iraq Veterans Against War. He'll carry with him 20 plaster replicas of a standard-issue, factory-made Styrofoam cup. They're part of a set numbering 779 replica cups, each cup dedicated to prisoners detained in Guantanamo. In the entire collection, 220 of the cups bear the names of Afghan citizens imprisoned in Guantanamo.
In Guantanamo, with each evening meal, Guantanamo prisoners are served tea in styrofoam cups. Many prisoners etch floral designs into their cups, which become a nightly artistic outlet for men with few other freedoms allowed them. Aaron had heard a former Guantanamo guard describe how deeply he grew to deeply love the cups that had become works of art.
The cups would then be collected, each night, and turned over to military intelligence which most likely just dumped them. Aaron's cups are more durable. A Guantanamo prisoner's name is written on the base of every cup, and each carries a unique design. Following the practice of the prisoners, Aaron focused on etching floral patterns into the cups he created, displaying flowers that are native to each prisoner's homeland. 220 of the cups he has sculpted bear the names of prisoners from Afghanistan.
Life stories represented by each cup are reaching a wide variety of individuals and groups during Aaron's travels on behalf of the project. He invites people to sit with him, sip tea from the cups, and talk about their stories related to war, destruction, peace, love, creativity ...the conversations range freely, but the cups bring a certain focus, remembering the prisoners in Guantanamo.
I wish Aaron could somehow sit across from Tariq Ba Odah and serve him tea. Now 36 years old, Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni citizen, arrived in Guantanamo in 2002, when he was only 23. Detained without charge in Guantanamo since 2002, Tariq has maintained a hunger strike since 2007. He now weighs 74 pounds. His lawyers say that he visibly suffers from severe effects of malnutrition and is at serious risk of permanent physical and neurological impairment and death. Tariq Ba Odah endures horrible force-feeding rather than cooperating with the system that has separated him and the other prisoners from loved ones, subjecting them to torture and dehumanizing conditions.
Witness Against Torture activists from the U.S. focused on Tariq Ba Odah's life in Guantanamo when they set up their encampment, in late November, 2015, in Cuba, outside the U.S. naval base. Like Aaron, they feel great empathy for the people imprisoned in Guantanamo, along with the responsibility to keep educating U.S. people about the plight of 107 prisoners still held there. The delegation demanded that the prison close. They reject a new plan being developed by the Obama administration, which would move the Guantanamo prisoners to prisons in the U.S., some still to be held indefinitely without charge or trial.
"Simply moving Guantanamo is no solution," says Helen Schietinger of Washington, D.C. "That would mean holding on to the barbaric practice of indefinite detention. Besides, the entire domestic system of "correctional' institutions is a travesty, poisoned by racism. We need to overhaul the U.S. justice system, not add Guantanamo to it."
Enmanuel Candelario, an artist from New York, spoke bluntly about the base itself, calling it "an unwelcome symbol of U.S. power, which houses a torture chamber."
We can't directly nourish Tariq Ba Odah or bring him the consolation and affection for which he must also be starving. But together we can invite people to slow down and think about their actual circumstances and relationships with supposed enemies. We can help dismantle the terrible Islamophobia and fear that keeps many people in the U.S. imprisoned in the reckless grip of warmakers.
When Aaron arrives in the Afghan Peace Volunteer community, he will sit with the young volunteers and the child laborers who are part of the Borderfree Street Kids School. He'll also connect with local artists. While here, he hopes to serve tea and converse with people in a variety of places.
The conversations will very likely stir up questions about the 220 Afghans who were imprisoned in Guantanamo, as well as Afghans detained in the 'Afghan Guantanamo', Bagram Prison. I asked friends in our community here what questions they hope might be raised. Here are two responses: "Prisoners of the U.S. military - are they people who can create and enjoy art?" "Do they love?"
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At Gates of Guantanamo, Activists Counter Unjust Detention With 'Powerful Act of Compassion'
'We are here to say: We know you are suffering; we have come to stand with you.'
Nov 26, 2015
Hours after President Barack Obama signed into law a defense bill that continues to thwart closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, a group of human rights activists is staging a vigil and fast at its gates to say "the whole prison must shut down."
Under the banner "Forced-Feeding, Not Feasting at Guantanamo," the Thanksgiving Day action outside of the base in Cuba by 14 members of Witness Against Torture aims to put a spotlight on the men who continue to suffer unjust detention and the continued practice of force-feedings of hunger striking prisoners at "the site of one of our country's greatest shames."
"Our actions are a simple act of solidarity," Chris Knestrick from Cleveland, Ohio said in a media statement. "We are here to say: We know you are suffering; we have come to stand with you."
In addition to closing the prison, the group says the U.S. military needs to shut down entirely its naval base in Cuba.
"The military base itself is an unwelcome symbol of U.S. power, which houses a torture chamber," said New York artist Enmanuel Candelario. "No country should endure this breach of its sovereignty."
The group's current visit to Guantanamo marks their second; their initial trip was a decade ago. "We are impatient," said Frank Lopez, an educator from New York City. "That is the understatement of the century," he said, noting that though a few of the detainees have been freed and despite Obama's pledge in 2008 to close the prison, 47 men who've been cleared for release still languish there. "The whole prison must shut down," he said.
The action was met with praise by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has represented current and former Guantanamo detainees.
Aliya Hana Hussain, Advocacy Program Manager for the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at CCR, writes Thursday, "In a place designed to dehumanize everyone it touches, this simple act of compassion has real power."
"In the absence of their own homecoming, these activists are bringing humanity to the prisoners," she writes, noting that
The protest comes at a significant moment. The Obama administration is finalizing its plan to close Guantanamo, which will likely involve bringing a number of prisoners to the United States for continued detention without charge. Like us at CCR, the activists with Witness Against Torture know that it is the barbaric practice of indefinite detention, the selective denial of due process for Muslim men, that needs to end. [...]
With the Obama administration entering its last year, we are coming to a critical juncture in the history of the prison. It is not just the President's legacy that is on the line; the lives of men like our clients Tariq Ba Odah, Fahd Ghazy, Mohammed Al Hamiri and Ghaleb Al-Bihani hang in the balance. Today, as I gather with friends and family, I will give thanks for not being alone in this effort, for having allies like Witness Against Torture who will continue to stand up to the injustice of indefinite detention no matter where it takes place.
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