16 January 2006
US Catholic Worker Community draws spotlight on Guantanamo
Ecumenical News International
Cheryl Heckler
Oxford, Ohio (ENI). A group of 25 people based in a Catholic Worker Community in New York City have drawn international attention for their protest against the US policy on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Members of the group, known for its support of non-violence, launched Witness Against Torture, a campaign which culminated in a protest and prayer vigil in mid-December outside the prison camp at the US naval base in Cuba where an estimated 500 prisoners from more than 30 countries are held. The group plans to hold a protest in Washington DC on Ash Wednesday, 1 March. They also are writing letters to prisoners at the camp.
The trip was especially poignant for protester Frida Berrigan, the 31-year-old daughter of the late Philip Berrigan, whose non-violent, religious-based protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s spurred a nationwide response and got him listed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.
"In the war on terror, these prisoners are clearly victims - the most vilified and, in one sense, the most abused," Berrigan told Ecumenical News International. "We felt really called to respond."
The trip included a 107 kilometre (60 miles) walk from the city of Santiago de Cuba to the US military facility. Prisoners within the facility learned of the protest from Arabic language newspapers and visiting attorneys.
"We wanted the prisoners to know that there were ordinary people in the US who wanted to respond person-to-person and to say, 'We don't see you as the enemy. We are suffering because of the treatment you are receiving'."
As the controversial detention of "enemy combatants" enters its fifth year, US President George W. Bush shows no sign of closing the site. On 13 January he rejected a suggestion by Germany's visiting chancellor, Angela Merkel, that the prison camp be shut down.
Witness Against Torture joins Amnesty International, the US National Council of Churches, the American Jewish Committee, the Islamic Circle of North America and Human Rights Watch in opposing the US policy. Established 100 years ago in the south-east of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay is the oldest overseas base of the United States, which exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the military base under a perpetual lease signed by Cuba and the US in 1903.