{"id":466,"date":"2018-01-18T13:03:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T18:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/?p=466"},"modified":"2019-01-16T18:34:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T23:34:11","slug":"report-from-close-guantanamo-in-washington-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/2018\/01\/18\/report-from-close-guantanamo-in-washington-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"Report from “Close Guantanamo” in Washington DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joan Walsh, an anti-torture activist from North Carolina, with\u00a0North Carolina Stop Torture Now<\/a>, calls on Donald Trump to close Guant\u00e1namo at the annual rally outside the White House on January 11, 2018, the 16th anniversary of the opening of the prison. She was supporting the new Close Guant\u00e1namo initiative, counting how many days Guant\u00e1namo has been open \u2014 a shocking total of 5,845 days on the anniversary.\u00a0 (From Close Guantanamo)\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Joan’s report follows:<\/em><\/p>\n

NCSTN members Peggy Misch and Joan Walsh went to DC for the 16th-anniversary Close Guant\u00e1namo event this year.\u00a0 The rally\u00a0took place\u00a0at 11:30\u00a0a.m. near the south end of Lafayette Square.\u00a0 In prior years, this demonstration\u00a0was held in the street, but since April 2017, the block of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House has been closed off.<\/p>\n

Coalition members for the event included Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Close Guant\u00e1namo, CodePink, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Defending Rights and Dissent, the Justice for Muslims Collective, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, No More Guant\u00e1namos, Reprieve, September 11th Families for a Peaceful Tomorrows, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, Veterans For Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Witness Against Torture, and World Can\u2019t Wait.<\/p>\n

Approximately 250 to 300 people attended, more than in recent years.\u00a0 Around 25, including Peggy, wore orange jump suits and hoods.\u00a0 Many of the latter held placards reading \u201c41,\u201d the number of men still held at Guant\u00e1namo prison, five of whom have long been cleared for release.\u00a0 Short speeches were followed by a \u201ctea ceremony\u201d in which jump-suited participants drank from cups, each labeled with a detainee’s name, then placed them in a row near the curb while that person’s name was read.\u00a0 After that, five jump-suited participants, three women and two men, crossed the yellow tape along the curb and were arrested in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue.\u00a0 Police began searching and processing them while the rest of us sang, and this continued for some time.\u00a0 The arrestees were sitting in obvious discomfort on the far curb, and it appeared the police did not want to remove them until we dispersed.\u00a0 The demonstration was disbanded at about 1:30.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a> is a link to Andy Worthington’s report of the event, including a short video of remarks from Mark Fallon, Pardiss Kebriaei of CCR, and Andy.<\/p>\n

Peggy and Joan then attended a panel presentation held at New America, 740 15th<\/sup> St.\u00a0 Speakers were Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, Andy, and Tom Wilner, a lawyer who co-founded Close Guant\u00e1namo with Andy and currently represents a detainee at Guant\u00e1namo.\u00a0 You can also view this 90-minute presentation at the above link; the video does not include the lively question\/answer period that followed.\u00a0 At least 100 people attended, and Andy noted the audience was much bigger than it had been in recent years.\u00a0 All in all, it was a very worthwhile day.<\/p>\n

Last but not least, that same day a new habeas petition<\/a> was filed by CCR on behalf of 11 prisoners, two\u00a0 of them among the five cleared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Walsh, an anti-torture activist from North Carolina, with\u00a0North Carolina Stop Torture Now, calls on Donald Trump to close Guant\u00e1namo at the annual rally outside the White House on January 11, 2018, the 16th anniversary of the opening of the prison. She was supporting the new Close Guant\u00e1namo initiative, counting how many days Guant\u00e1namo has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}