You’ll Never Believe How These Activists Spent Thanksgiving

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You’ll Never Believe How These Activists Spent Thanksgiving

December 1st, 2015

Awake Goy

Michaela Whitton (AM) : While millions wore seasonal sweaters, carved the turkey, and squabbled with their families on Thursday, a group of activists set a Thanksgiving table of empty plates outside the notorious U.S. naval base, Guantánamo Bay.

PHOTO: CASSANDRA MONROE/U.S. NATIONAL GUARD

Fourteen members of Witness Against Torture — a group who have campaigned for the closing of the lawless facility for over ten years — travelled to Cuba to hold a Thanksgiving fast in solidarity with Guantanamo prisoners.

On President Obama’s second day in office, he pledged to close Guantánamo within a year, yet it remains open to this day. Inside the prison, 107 men remain, 47 of whom are trapped in legal limbo, cleared for release yet never charged with any crime.

Last Wednesday the group of activists set up camp at El Mirador, 2-3 km away from Guantánamo, where they could see the prison and prison officials could see them.

On Thursday, while directly facing the base, they solemnly sang Courage Muslim Brother — a line of a folk song with lyrics used during the liberation struggle in Apartheid South Africa.

Courage, Muslim Brother

You do not walk alone

We will walk with you

And sing your spirit home

The fasting protesters then performed a ritual titled “Forced-Feeding, Not Feasting at Guantanamo.” At the head of a table full of empty plates, an activist dressed as a hooded detainee was attached to the sinister apparatus used for forced feeding. The protesters, wearing the prison’s distinctive orange suits held the action to represent the pain and distress endured by Guantanamo’s hunger strikers, past and present.

Muslim-American professor and researcher, Dr. Maha Hilal, took part in the protest and wrote an open letter to the prisoners:

To my dear Muslim Brothers detained in Guantanamo Bay Prison,

I want you to know that today I’m coming to you, that I’m walking to the naval base to find you. I want you to know that your lives transcend borders and that your spirits exist above law. I want you to know that my liberation is bound up in yours; that none of us are free until you are.

I want you to know that I’ve carefully looked through your pictures and read your stories; that I examined your pictures closely and tried to fathom your pain and suffering. That I tried to do so, in hopes of alleviating just a small piece of your torture.

I want you to know that I pray for you every day. That I can’t wear the color orange without knowing and feeling that there exists, on the edge of a small country, a prison that tortures you.

I want you to know that I’m here until the end and until you are free. I want you know that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but that I count none except those that bring you closer to freedom and justice.

I hope that one day, Insha’Allah, we will greet each other at the mosque, saying Assalamu Alaikum, knowing that you are my protector and that I am yours.

Until then, dear brothers, be well and rise up, knowing that you are not alone. We hear you, see you, and will never let your lives be in vain.

Your sister in Islam,

Maha