Reina Sultan Nicole Cardoza Reina Sultan Nicole Cardoza

Fight to close Guantanamo Bay.

During his first term, President Barack Obama promised to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay (New Yorker). Yet 40 people still remain incarcerated there today (New York Times). Opened by President Bush as a response to the 9/11 attacks, Guantanamo is a prison camp in which the United States military has incarcerated over 700 Muslim men without charges or trials (New York Times). Earlier this year, Amnesty International reported the historic and ongoing human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay which include forced feedings of those on hunger strike, and improper medical care of torture survivors (Amnesty International).

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Last week we discussed the nuances of counterterrorism policies and its disproportionate impact on communities of color. Today's newsletter by Reina expands on this topic, and advocates for the closing of Guantanamo Bay as part of our reckoning with the inequitable criminal justice system.

As a reminder, revisit our election safety plan and connect with local community organizers in response to uprising re: today's inauguration.

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Nicole

TAKE ACTION

To work toward the closure of Guantanamo:

  • Support prisoners by reading their books (like Enemy Combatant by Moazzam Begg) and articles.

  • Sign up for Reprieve’s mailing list to get actions straight to your inbox. Reprieve is a legal action non-profit that defends marginalized people against human rights abuses. 

  • Join CAGE’s campaign, an organization that empowers communities impacted by the War on Terror.

GET EDUCATED

By Reina Sultan (she/her)

During his first term, President Barack Obama promised to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay (New Yorker). Yet 40 people still remain incarcerated there today (New York Times). Opened by President Bush as a response to the 9/11 attacks, Guantanamo is a prison camp in which the United States military has incarcerated over 700 Muslim men without charges or trials (New York Times). Earlier this year, Amnesty International reported the historic and ongoing human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay which include forced feedings of those on hunger strike, and improper medical care of torture survivors (Amnesty International).

“Bush chose to imprison us on Guantanamo because he could argue that it was not US soil and hence US laws didn't apply,” Moazzam Begg, Outreach Director at CAGE and former Guantanamo prisoner, tells me. “[But] Guantanamo is illegal. Incarcerating people without charge or trial - after they were kidnapped and tortured by the most powerful nation in the world - is a crime.” 

During the anti-police violence uprisings in the summer of 2020, the demand to defund the police brought abolition into the national conversation. Folks who had never even considered what a world without police and prisons would look like began reading Mariame Kaba, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Angela Davis, while really analyzing whether the carceral state actually delivers justice (it doesn’t). Policing and prisons remain heavily debated topics today, especially as leading Democrats remain steadfastly supportive of the police despite this past summer’s events (Bitch Media). 

As the leading thinkers on abolition remind us often, we must think about abolition in a global sense. When we look at the injustices done at Guantanamo, we see the ways in which the United States polices the world and exports its racist and Islamophobic practices as far as it can reach (Wear Your Voice Mag). “The prisoners in Guantanamo had nothing to do with America or its (lack of) justice system and penal code. They never came to America, America came to them,” says Begg. 

Closing Guantanamo is of the utmost importance, especially after the events of January 6th (Washington Post). As the world watched violent white supremacists storm the chambers of Congress, many rushed to call them terrorists while others cautioned against this. (For more on the problems with the word “terrorist” in this context, check out our recent newsletter).  By claiming the United States has a terrorism problem, politicians can justify even bigger budgets for police, the FBI, the CIA, and agencies like ICE. 

We must not give Islamophobic, racist government officials more power to imprison and torture people. One of the reasons that Guantanamo so often falls out of the consciousness of Americans is because all of the prisoners are Muslim. 

“If there was a US prison built to detain and torture white Christian men, there's no way there wouldn't be an uproar,” Dr. Maha Hilal, Co-Director of Justice for Muslims Collective & organizer with Witness Against Torture, tells me. “But thanks to a legacy of the dehumanization of Muslims in addition to post 9/11 War on Terror narratives, Muslims have been thoroughly demonized.” Begg agrees, explaining that “prisoners [in Guantanamo Bay] were mostly from Africa or Asia, Muslims who came from different cultures and didn't speak English. That was enough to render them subhuman in the eyes of a military seeking vengeance for 9/11.”

According to Dr. Hilal,  many people believe that while “‘normal’ crime is attributed to a lack of services/support, terrorists [are seen as] inherently hateful and, therefore, irredeemable, unlike others accused [or] convicted of crimes.” She argues that we must “further deconstruct terrorism as a concept so it's not weaponized as being radically different” from other crimes. 

Closing Guantanamo is just one part of a process of reconciliation that the United States has yet to begin regarding its complicity in the global War on Terror (Prism). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drone strikes in Pakistan, support of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and sanctions in Iran have cost hundreds of thousands of lives (source). Millions have been dehumanized and traumatized by the United State’s Islamophobia, imperialism, and endless wars. 


We must remember that prison industrial complex abolition is a global demand, meaning we hope to free every incarcerated person worldwide--not just in the United States. We must acknowledge the horrors that have happened and continue to happen in Guantanamo and work to ensure they never happen again.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • PIC (Prison Industrial Complex) abolition is a global demand, not one that just applies to US-based prisons and jails. 

  • There are still 40 men held at Guantanamo Bay. Each day they are not free is an injustice. 

  • Committing to closing Guantanamo is the bare minimum for the Biden administration. We must pressure them to provide compensation, housing, and services for all of the survivors and to commit to ending all US-sanctioned torture.

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