The Peace PeopleBishop Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ernesto Cardenal, Fernando Cardenal and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton are among those answering the call of Fr Joseph Mulligan SJ to fast on Fridays from food and/or water in solidarity with the Guantanamo internees who are on hunger strike.
The internees who are being held without charge or trial have called the strike protesting their indefinite imprisonment and "beatings by the prison's Immediate Response Force". Many of the prisoners have been force-fed through tubes in the nose and the International Red Cross have expressed its concern. Last year, the ICRC accused the US of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners in Guantanamo.
You may join the fast and if doing so please contact Joe Mulligan SJ at mull@ibw.com.ni
You may also sign a decalration of solidarity and/or do a partial fast.
Text of Statement of Support:
1. We want to express our solidarity with the prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We join them in demanding that they be treated with due process according to law and with respect for their rights as human beings and as prisoners. Each prisoner deserves to have the charges against him stated clearly, to have adequate legal counsel, and to have due process in court, with recognition that in U.S. jurisprudence a person is innocent until proven guilty.
2. We invite all people of good will everywhere to organize protests against the unjust treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo. We support those who are fasting in solidarity with the Guantanamo prisoners, and we would like to suggest to those hunger strikers at Guantanamo that they consider the new fasters their replacements in their struggle. Thus we hope that the Guantanamo prisoners may consider the possibility of ending their fast and saving their lives.
3. We support the prisoners' protest against the widely known abuses and torture to which some of them have been subjected. These abuses, plus the fact that they are held in solitary confinement for inordinate lengths of time and that they do not know when, if ever, they will be brought to trial and possibly released or sentenced - constitute "cruel and unusual punishment."
4. We support the worldwide demand for an end to the military occupation of Iraq by U.S., British, and other foreign armies. The killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the wounding of perhaps 100,000 or more people, the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody - these and other realities of the occupation are evidence of the massive state terrorism being perpetrated against the people of Iraq.
In these days of August we are profoundly and painfully aware of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago this August 6 and 9 - a massive and horrendous act of terrorism through weapons of mass destruction. We are appalled that the U.S. government - the only one which has ever used the atomic bomb against populations -- continues to develop new nuclear weapons instead of promoting true non-proliferation.
Those of us who are U.S. citizens denounce the crimes and sins of our government and our people. We have a long history of political and military domination of Latin America and other regions of the world - including invasions, support for military coups and dictatorships, training of foreign troops in torture at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and other centers - and of economic exploitation through our banks and multinational corporations.
5. Above all, we are struggling in hope and confidence that the demands of the prisoners at Guantanamo for due process and for humane treatment, the demands of Iraqis and of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world for an end to the foreign military occupation of Iraq, and the demands of all humanity for an end to the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons and an end to imperial interventions in sovereign countries - that these demands and hopes will become realities in the near future.
If these demands and hopes, as well as others that are equally essential, are not realized in the near future, there may be no future at all for the next generation.