For immediate release: Thursday 11 January
2018
The London Guantánamo Campaign [1] and human rights
activists will mark the sixteenth anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo
Bay detention camp with a candlelight vigil [2] outside the US Embassy,
Grosvenor Square, at 6-8pm on Thursday 11 January 2018.
As part of this solidarity action, activists will
hold up images of the 41 men who remain at Guantánamo Bay, largely without
charge, trial or the prospect of release [3].
Aisha Maniar, organiser from the London
Guantánamo Campaign, says, "While it is a positive development that Donald
Trump has not gone through with his pre-election threat to load up Guantánamo
with “bad dudes” [4], far less attention has been paid to the fact that many of
Trump’s more noxious policies have been facilitated by the
actions of previous presidents. This includes sixteen
years of the continued operation of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp and
the "war on terror" more broadly.
“In addition, the rights violating practices surrounding Guantanamo are
now a model for the detention and incarceration polices of the US and other
states. Plans to expand immigration detention for undocumented migrants
and the deplorable conditions in such facilities [5] are connected to
Guantánamo’s origins and existence, as Trump’s initial travel ban included only
Iran in addition to the states in which the resettlement of Guantánamo
prisoners [6] was already prohibited.
“Elsewhere, the fact that none of the remaining
prisoners were captured on the battlefield by the US military and that
eighty-six percent were sold into US custody by Afghan militias and the
Pakistani military for cash bounties [7] finds its contemporary resonance in
the current brutal slave trade in migrants in Libya. It is the failure of the
international community, and not just of the US, to act to close Guantánamo
that has helped to legitimise this status quo.
“With the US Embassy due to move imminently to new
premises in south London, after over a decade of sustained and continuous
protest against Guantánamo at this famous site, it is likely to be our last
large protest there. It is a shame that the US has been able to build and
transfer its British embassy faster than it is able to close Guantánamo.”
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The London Guantánamo Campaign was set up in
2006 and campaigns for justice for all prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, for the
closure of this and other secret prisons, and an end to the practice of
extraordinary rendition. http://londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.co.uk/
2. For more details of the event, see our website http://londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/11-january-2018-candlelight-vigil-to.html
This event will be preceded by another anniversary
vigil in Trafalgar Square at 12-3pm organised by the Guantanamo Justice
Campaign
6. Originally Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Somalia; Iraq and
Sudan were later removed from the list.
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