Protesters around the world decry Guantánamo

WAR ON TERRORISM
Global protesters decry Guantánamo


In Budapest and Berlin, Doral and Washington, D.C., protesters donned orange jumpsuits and black hoods in a global protest against the Bush administration's prison camps at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

BY CAROL ROSENBERG AND LESLEY CLARK



From anti-Iraq War mom Cindy Sheehan inside Cuba to Florida International University student Lis-Marie Alvarado on a street corner in Doral, demonstrators fanned out across the globe Thursday to protest America's 5-year-old experiment in offshore incarceration at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The protests came as a top Democrat said Congress would scrutinize the Bush administration's handling of the Guantánamo prison camps -- with an eye toward closing the facility.

''The new Democratic majority has every intention of conducting vigorous oversight on these issues and getting answers on the administration's detention practices,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. ``The administration has said it hopes to close the facility at Guantánamo, an objective that I share.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16441433.htm

has violated everything good we ever stood for and fought for, and everything decent in American policy and law. What our WW II soldiers died for--world peace and international law--the Bush Junta is spitting on. What the American Revolution was fought for--our very foundation in human rights and the rule of law--the Bush Junta hates and is dismantling. The Iraq War and Guantanamo Bay are the end of the American Revolution. This Junta has defeated it. Now we have, somehow, to restore democracy and Constitutional government, and it's not going to be easy. First step, in my opinion, is restoring transparent vote counting. These protesters meanwhile are reminding us why we must do that. They are the heroes of the American Revolution at this end of history. They should be honored and should be given flag waving parades in every community in this nation. They ARE America, more than anybody right now! They are sacrificing their time, their energy, their resources--and are no doubt putting themselves on "watch lists" with unknown consequences to their rights, their careers and possibly their lives--to remind us who we are. Please support them any way you can--letters to editors, Congress, governors, state reps, calls to radio shows, donations, local community resolutions, public education.

Cuba: Cindy Sheehan arrives for Gitmo protest
Submitted by WW4 Report on Thu, 01/11/2007 - 21:18.

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, was among several US citizens who arrived in Cuba on Jan. 6 in preparation for a series of actions Jan. 9-13 to protest the US military's use of its Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba to detain Muslim men captured as alleged "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror." The rest of the delegation is scheduled to arrive on Jan. 9 for a press conference that day in Havana, followed by a Jan. 10 conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on prison conditions and international law.

On Jan. 11, the fifth anniversary of the date in 2002 when the first "enemy combatant" detainees arrived at the Guantanamo base, the delegation will march from the city of Guantanamo to the security gate of the US naval base to hold an interfaith service and call for the closing of the prison. The trip will end with another press conference in Havana on Jan. 13. A smaller group from the delegation will then travel to the US to lobby Congress to shut the prison, restore habeas corpus, repeal the Military Commissions Act, and give all detainees fair trials or release them.

Members of the full delegation include Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was freed after years of abuse, and Zohra Zewawi, the mother of British citizen Omar Deghayes, who has been detained at Guantanamo since September 2002. Zewawi says her son has been tortured and blinded in one eye during his detention; he has never been charged or tried for anything. Also participating are Medea Benjamin, director of Global Exchange, and Bill Goodman, legal director of the US Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has taken the cases of Guantanamo detainees to the US Supreme Court. The protest is being organized by Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. Witness Against Torture, a campaign to shut down the Guantanamo prison, is coordinating a parallel series of Jan. 11 actions in Washington. (AP, Jan. 6; CODEPINK press release, Jan. 3; WitnessTorture.org, accessed Jan. 7)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/3023