A Day of Action to Close Guantanamo and Bagram and End Torture [DC]

Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives
Thursday, January 21 — A Day of Action to Close Guantanamo and Bagram and End Torture.

10:15 am: Gather at the White House for a brief program

10:45 am: Begin procession to Supreme Court (mile and a half walk)
This will be a silent and solemn procession of people dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods. We will have suits available. 

12:15 pm : Arrive at the Supreme Court (across the street from the U.S. Capitol) for vigil with "Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives" banners.

Broken Promises

On January 22, 2009, President Barack Obama signed executive orders outlawing torture and committing his administration to closing Guantanamo within a year. "We will uphold our highest values and ideals," Obama said. "It is important to us to do that not only because that's who we are, but also, ultimately it will make us safer."

We in the anti-torture movement had reason to be hopeful. We looked forward to seeing Guantanamo closed, to seeing the many innocent men there freed, and to seeing those against whom the U.S. had credible evidence at last charged and brought to trial.  We looked forward to transparency, accountability, and decency in government.

But by fall, our hope had faltered.  And, on November 19, President Obama broke the terms of his executive order and his promise to America and the world. Now we hear that the administration plans to keep Guantanamo open at least until 2011.  

Nothing can excuse the moral and constitutional disaster that Guantanamo's continuing operation represents-- not  the difficulties in resettling men cleared for release, not the fear-mongering of those in Congress and the media intent on seeing Obama fail, and not the cowardice of those in Obama's own party.

Since coming to office, the Obama administration has presented Guantanamo as an administrative problem, a cause of embarrassment, and a foreign policy liability. It has never faced Guantanamo for what it truly is: a grave injustice which the United States is duty bound to immediately set right.  It has never asserted political will equal to the challenge Obama set and to the ideals he proclaimed.

The wreckage of the past cannot be cleared if it's key monument - the prison at Guantanamo - remains intact.

Broken Laws

Along with its promise to close Guantanamo, the Obama administration pledged to put U.S. policies and practices in accordance with domestic and international law. Yet the United States continues to detain dozens of men at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release (some 103 of the 198 men currently detained). Echoing the policies of President George W. Bush, Obama proposes the indefinite detention-- without charge or trial-- of men against whom no case has been built or from whom "evidence" was obtained through torture.  If this scheme extends to the proposed facility in Illinois for "war on terror" captives, Obama will have simply replaced the lawlessness of Guantanamo with a "legal black hole" in the continental United States. 

In addition, the Obama Justice Department has repeatedly invoked the "state secrets" defense to beat back legal efforts of those kidnapped and tortured as they seek acknowledgment of their injury. And it has steadfastly refused to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute those who designed and ordered torture policies, choosing instead a limited inquiry into the most egregious cases of "unauthorized" abuse.  Failing to investigate alleged torture is a violation of U.S. law and America's treaty obligations.
 
Finally, at the prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, detained men are still denied the right to challenge their detention — a right that the Supreme Court upheld for the men at Guantanamo.  Rather than breaking with the Bush administration, President Obama is instead shoring up the extra-legal powers of the presidency that Bush had claimed.

Broken Lives

All the while, the men at Guantanamo continue to languish without charge, trial, or, for those who are innocent, any certain prospect for their release.  For many, years and years have gone by.  Children have grown up without seeing their fathers.  Parents have died. Families and whole communities have been torn apart.  And what so many of the men most seek-- simply a day in court to argue their innocence-- has again and again been snatched away.
For some, there is no life beyond Guantanamo.  Five men have died at the camp. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani died at Guantanamo on June 9, 2006. Their deaths were officially classified as suicides. But, in the March 2010 cover article of a Harper's Magazine, Scott Horton interviews a Guantanamo whistleblower who provides strong evidence for the existence of a CIA secret prison, dubbed "Camp No," at Guantanamo-- – a place where, it seems, the three detainees did not die by their own hands, but were tortured to death.
One useful way for the president to mark the anniversary of his failed pledge to shut down Guantanamo would be to immediately launch an investigation into these deaths and the cover up of their circumstances.

In addition to these three men, Abdul Rahman Maadha al-Amri reportedly committed suicide on May 30, 2007 and in December 2007, an Afghani grandfather named Abdul Razzak died of cancer.

The vast majority of those who continue to languish in this modern day heart of darkness are men who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and swept into the möbius strip of cruel treatment, inhuman conditions, legal jargon, and political calculation that is the "American justice in the age on terror."

Fast and Vigil for Justice

The administration must be held to its words and promises. Its failures cannot be masked with rationalizations and false deference to the constraints of partisan bickering and legal complexities. The inability to fulfill the mandate of the Executive Order to close Guantanamo within a year is just such a failure, making still more urgent the demand for true justice.
And so, Witness Against Torture marked January 11, 2010—the date eight years ago that the first men captured in the "war on terror" arrived at Guantanamo—as a Day of National Shame and launched an 12 Day Fast and Vigil for Justice. More than 150 people from around the country joined the fast, 50 of them vigiling and meeting daily in Washington, DC. The fast ends on January 22-- the Obama administration's widely proclaimed, and now-voided, deadline for closing Guantanamo.

To conclude our fast and vigil for justice, we walk as Guantanamo prisoners from the White House to the Supreme Court and near the U.S. Capitol, highlighting all of the institutions that have failed to execute their most basic function - justice.