Guantanamo – Ten Years of Shame Later

• Today marks ten years of shame since the first prisoners were transported by the US to the illegal detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Almost 200 remain in custody suffering extreme conditions. Almost half of them have been exonerated and cleared for release by both the US military and national security services. They are among hundreds of innocent people who were swept up in the hysteria. In spite of being cleared, they are still imprisoned and there is no indication they will be released any time soon. The politics of fear keeps them deprived of liberty, dignity and human rights.

  
  

   At the same time, torture continues in America’s prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers. Inmates in prolonged solitary confinement — which is recognized the world over as torture — have resumed their hunger strike in the California prison system. Some have been kept in total isolation for 40 years and more.

  President Obama says he will not use the provision of the new National Defense Authorization Act (which he signed) which allows him to place American citizens, too, only suspected of terrorism in indefinite detention. But the law is now on the books for his use or for any other administration.

  When will this end?

  My thanks to all who resist and to my friend and fellow playwright Jennie Webb for bringing back from the UN the image you see here.

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