Vigil at US embassy in Dublin Calling to Close Guantanamo

Day

Brief summary of the vigil held outside the Dublin embassy.

Activists turned out yesterday in the freezing cold outside the US embassy in Dublin to protest the continued existence of the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and in solidarity with their fellow-activists from around the planet who’d chosen the 11th as the time to jointly protest the 6th anniversary of the opening of this abomination.

The vigil took place between 4pm and 6pm and the transition from day to night seemed to say something profound about the way the disappeared are treated with regard to their being kidnapped and hidden from the world. One activist who’d stationed himself on a traffic island with a sign that invited motorists to honk if they believed in closing Guantanamo ensured a constant reminder was heard that showed that nobody condones the existence of Guantanamo.

Many passers-by signed a petition that was to be handed into the embassy at 6 O’clock. The vigil provided an opportunity for activists to convey a fuller picture of the nature of the Guantanamo facility to members of the public who’d only been given a rudimentary and facile picture of this by the mainstream media. It was heartening to know that despite the depth of knowledge that people lacked about this facility, that our fellow human beings still deplore the existence of concentration camps in the 21st century.

As ever, we were joined by our good friend in his orange Gitmo suit, seasoned activist, Colm Roddy, who spent most of the two hours on the ice-cold footpath on his knees, in a stress-position. How he manages this is beyond me as I have sore knees just from kneeling to take a handful of photographs.

The Gardaí were present, but not in large numbers and they gave us plenty of room for the vigil, the only interaction being some good-natured banter.

Guantanamo Bay is still populated by approximately 300 forgotten souls, many who’ve been put beyond the protection of international law and American law. All of them have been tortured in one way or another and many of them were taken there, if not through Shannon or other Irish airports, then through Irish airspace, which John Gormley a few weeks back told me was hard to police. Colin Powell and even George Bush have said that they wish to close Guantanamo. Even the American Supreme Court has said that these inmates are entitled to the recognition of law and that they must be tried and convicted or tried and found innocent - that there must be no grey area in this matter. And still the abomination stays open.

Lest we forget, Guantanamo is not the only place where human beings are held without basic human rights, there are many more. Not least of these is Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan which currently holds 20,000 or more miserable prisoners. Facilities like Bagram are considered worse than Guantanamo with regard to the treatment of prisoners. The US has said that it wishes to close the makeshift prison that would be overcrowded if it held only 10,000. They say that they cannot close this facility and hand the prisoners over to the authorities in Afghanistan as they cannot be sure of the prisoners’ fair treatment at the hands of the authorities from Afghanistan. The irony surely bleeds from this position.

Human beings are entitled to basic human rights, regardless as to what they’re suspected of. Human beings are entitled to a process whereby their guilt or their innocence is established. Human beings are entitled to live freely and not be placed into a state of tortuous limbo by their fellow human beings. We as free persons by our very nature illustrate the need and the right to be free and our very existence by its nature screams that abominations like Guantanamo be closed.