From the Archive

Update

Dear friends,

We are preparing for our retreat and yearly planning session in NYC this March 31- April 2. The organising team spent some time on our conference call last night talking out what questions and topics we want to reflect on as a community. We hope our time together will inform our work this year.  We really want to continue building together. If you have participated our  n events before and want to join us, please remember to RSVP to witnesstorture@gmail.com.  We need to arrange for housing and meals.

Erica Ewing, from Cleveland, wrote a reflection on the No Torture Sessions action she was involved in on January 11. Her thoughts remain true to this day as we experience the chaos of the current administration: “Similarly to what people must feel when they see a dozen orange jumpsuits in the streets of DC, my thoughts are jarred by the mundane “business as usual” approach of those who traverse these halls of congress. Their complete disconnect to the consequences their actions have on the real live people.” You can read more here.

Jeremy Varon, from New York, had an article published on Public Seminar that conveyed much of our concerns surrounding the fate of Guantanamo Bay prisoners and the current Muslim Bans: “Trump’s most hateful policies trade on fears of the most vulnerable: foreign, Muslim men under broad suspicion of being terrorists. To reject this fear is to reject Guantánamo, retro-fitted as the dense container of the worst impulses of Trump and his supporters. Always in part a symbol, Guantánamo now looms as a kind of “stress test” of the power of sanity and tolerance against fear-mongering prejudice.” You can read more here.

Maha Hilal has connected us to the DC Justice for Muslims Coalition, which has been actively resisting the Muslim Ban in DC – check out their work here. She also recently wrote an article about white allyship here.

Finally, Mohamedou Ould Slahi was interviewed by 60 Minutes and has brought Guantanamo and the issue of torture back into the news cycle. When asked “Does torture work?”, he responds with “In what way? If working’s bringing pain on me, yes. If working is giving false confessions, yes. If “works” is giving good intelligence, no. If it works resulting in my conviction, hello! I’m here, after 15 years and not even charged, let alone being convicted. So how can you convince anyone possibly who has a shred of intelligence that it works?” If you have not watched his interview yet, you can see it here.

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Donate to support our work

We are asking our supporters to donate $41 to Witness Against Torture to symbolize the 41 men remaining in Guantanamo.

Witness Against Torture is completely volunteer driven and run. We have no paid staff, but do have expenses associated with our organizing work. We need your financial support. We are fiscally sponsored by the Washington Peace Center. The Washington Peace Center is a verified US-registered non profit. If you are able, click here to donate.

We promise to honor your donations by carry on in our activities until torture is decisively ended, its victims are fully acknowledged, Guantánamo and similar facilities are closed, and those who ordered and committed torture are held to account.