Andy Worthington's Blog, page 145

Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo, the Hunger Strike and Shaker Aamer in Westminster, Birmingham and Tooting

Please sign the e-petition calling for the British government to secure the return to the UK from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who has been cleared for release since 2007. 100,000 signatures are needed by April 20.

With a huge hunger strike taking place at Guantánamo, the prison is on the mainstream media’s radar more than it has been for many, many months, if not years — and, in the UK, it is also time for there to be a renewed focus on the case of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison.

Despite being cleared for release under President Bush and President Obama, Shaker is still held, even though he is the one prisoner, out of 86 prisoners cleared for release but still held, who could — and should — be released immediately. Congress has raised obstacles to the release of prisoners to any country that can be regarded as dangerous, but few, if any lawmakers would dare to argue that Britain fits that category.

In the UK, the ongoing detention of Shaker Aamer continues to appal those who have been campaigning for his release for many years — and the British government’s persistent claims that they are doing all they can to secure his return do not sound convincing. Last year, Shaker’s family launched an e-petition asking the British government to explain how, as America’s closest ally in the “war on terror,” it cannot secure Shaker’s return to the UK, to his British wife and four children, and there is now just one month to go for campaigners to try and ensure that the petition gets 100,000 signatures so that it is eligible for a Parliamentary debate. Please note that only British citizens and residents can sign it, although there is no lower age limit, so all family members can sign. Anyone anywhere in the world can sign the international petition here.

As part of a week of action on behalf of Shaker Aamer, I’m taking part in three events this week — I’m in conversation with my friend, the former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, at the University of Westminster in London tomorrow (Tuesday March 19), and, on Thursday (March 21), I travel to Birmingham to discuss Guantánamo, the hunger strike and Shaker Aamer at the University of Birmingham. Both events are organised by the respective Amnesty International student societies. On Saturday, I head to Tooting, in south London, for a day of action organised by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, to secure signatures for the e-petition, where I will be joining other campaigners including the journalist Yvonne Ridley, Jean Lambert MEP, Jane Ellison MP (Shaker’s constituency MP), Joy Hurcombe (the chair of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign), Imam Suliman Gani of Tooting Islamic Centre, and Shaker’s family.

The full details are below:

Tuesday March 19, 6pm: Andy Worthington in Conversation with Omar Deghayes

University of Westminster, Room 358, Regent Street Campus, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW.

This event is organised by Westminster University Amnesty International Society, and features a discussion between independent journalist and Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington and former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, who was held from 2002 until 2007. Omar and Andy have made numerous appearances together over the last few years, and in 2010 undertook a UK tour to promotes the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” co-directed by Andy and Polly Nash, in which Omar featured prominently. See the Facebook page here.

Thursday March 21, 5pm: Andy Worthington Speaking About Guantánamo and Shaker Aamer

University of Birmingham, Lecture Theatre WG5, Aston Webb Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT. 

This event is organised by Birmingham University Amnesty International Group and the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS). Independent journalist and Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington will be discussing the hunger strike at Guantánamo, the case of Shaker Aamer, his work as a media partner of WikiLeaks in the release of classified files relating to the prisoners in 2011, and his visit to the US in January as a member of the steering committee of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign. See the Facebook page here.

Saturday March 23, 12 noon to 5pm: All Day E-Petition Action for Shaker Aamer with Andy Worthington, Yvonne Ridley, Jean Lambert MEP, Jane Ellison MP, Joy Hurcombe, Imam Suliman Gani and Shaker Aamer’s family

Outside Tooting Islamic Centre, 152 -156 Upper Tooting Road, London SW17 7TJ.

This event, designed to gather as many signatures as possible for the Shaker Aamer e-petition, which ends on April 20, is organised by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, with the generous support of Tooting Islamic Centre. Throughout the day, the speakers will also be addressing supporters and passers-by, to provide education and inspiration. For further information, please contact the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign on 07756 493877.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Quarterly Fundraiser: Last Call for Donations to Support My Work on Guantánamo and Austerity

Please support my work!

Last week was my quarterly fundraiser, in which, as I do every three months, I ask you, my friends and supporters, to donate if you can to support my work, primarily as an independent journalist, researcher and activist on Guantánamo and related issues, but also as a journalist and activist opposing the Tories’ ideologically-imposed austerity programme in the UK, which, at the moment, mostly involves me campaigning to save the NHS, although I try, when I can, to also highlight the government’s disgraceful assault on the disabled.

Although I receive financial support for some of my Guantánamo work, much of what I do is unpaid (see my TV and radio appearances here, for example), as is my political activism in the UK, and, allied to this, my photography. Since last May, I’ve been working as a photographer, mainly on a project to photograph the whole of London by bike, but also photographing protests — to save Lewisham Hospital, my local hospital in London, and also about Guantánamo (both in the UK and the US).

Thanks to the generosity of 17 friends and supporters, I received $550 (£330) last week to support my work, but I’m putting out this final appeal for donations to try and raise a little more. I only put out an appeal every 13 weeks, and it would be wonderful if I could reach at least $1000 (£600) to provide me with much-needed financial assistance for the three months to come.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500 — or, of course, the equivalent in pounds sterling or any other currency. $25 is just $2 a week to support my work, which, I hope, is good value for money!

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world (just (click on the “Donate” button above), but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

My thanks again to everyone who donated last week, and to everyone who reads and shares and supports my work, regardless of whether or not you can assist me financially. This is more important than anything — although it does help to be able to pay the bills!

Andy Worthington

London, March 18, 2013

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”.

More Photos from “Born in Lewisham,” the Protest to Save Lewisham Hospital, March 16, 2013

More Photos from “Born in Lewisham,” the Protest to Save Lewisham Hospital, March 16, 2013, a set on Flickr.

On Saturday, another high-profile event took place in the campaign to “Save Lewisham Hospital” from destruction by senior NHS managers and the government, with an event entitled, “Born in Lewisham,” in which campaigners showed their support for the hospital with a gathering outside the entrance on Lewisham High Street, and a rally afterwards in Ladywell Fields, with speakers, music and stalls.

The particular focus of the event was on people born in Lewisham Hospital, who were encouraged to show their support for the hospital by having their photos taken for a photo gallery (forthcoming on the Save Lewisham Hospital website) and carrying home-made placards or wearing T-shirts with personalised messages. Some of those photos are featured in this photo set, and the previous one which I posted on Saturday.

The protest was the latest in a campaign that has reverberated throughout London and across the country as a whole, with 15,000 people attending a march and rally in November (in the pouring rain) and 25,000 people attending a march and rally in January (see my photos here, here and here), an unprecedented turnout for a “regional” campaign — bigger than most national campaigns — for which the people of Lewisham should be extremely proud.

The campaign was established in October 2012, when Matthew Kershaw, an NHS Special Administrator appointed last summer to deal with the financial problems of a neighbouring trust, the South London Healthcare Trust (based in the boroughs of Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley), recommended that Lewisham Hospital — which is not part of the SLHT and has no financial problems — should merge with one of the SLHT’s hospitals, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, and should have its A&E Department closed and other frontline services — including maternity — severely downgraded.

In Lewisham, this would mean tens of thousands of emergencies having to be dealt with elsewhere, as well as 90 percent of Lewisham’s mothers having to give birth outside the borough. It also means that there would be just one A&E in Woolwich for the 750,000 people in the three boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley, which is clearly unsafe and unacceptable.

As I explained on Saturday, when I published the first set of photos from Saturday’s protest, “People will die, as they try to reach emergency services many miles away, at rush hour, and, in addition, no one in the government or in the NHS’s senior management can explain how it is that we cannot afford to maintain the excellent maternity and children’s services at Lewisham that currently serve 270,000 people.” As I have mentioned previously, it is apparent to me that, to save the NHS, the people of Britain need to focus in particular on the medical directors of the NHS, who are orchestrating these deep and hugely damaging cuts, while pretending that they are improving services.

Reporting on Saturday’s event, the East London Lines blog spoke to Tony O’Sullivan, a paediatric consultant for Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust, and a member of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, who said: “It’s a real disgrace, to downgrade a very successful hospital with a very important part to play in the community.” He added, with reference to the alarming lack of A&E services in south east London if the plans go ahead, “Taking Lewisham A&E out would leave one emergency department for 750,000 people across three boroughs. The Government’s plan is for Queen Elizabeth, Woolwich, to be the main A&E centre and, even at the moment, that’s stretched.”

One campaigner told East London Lines that, “had she given birth in the maternity unit envisioned by the Government [midwife-led, but without access to any emergency services], she and her child might not still be alive.” She explained, “I’ve had three babies at the hospital. With the second one, my womb ruptured, it was really life-threatening — for me because of a lack of blood and for the baby because of a lack of oxygen. If there had been no consultant, just midwives, like what they’re hoping to do, and we were taken in an ambulance to another hospital, it might have been too late.”

The judicial reviews

As part of the ongoing campaign in Lewisham, two judicial reviews have been  launched. The first, which I wrote about here, was launched by Lewisham Council on March 7. A letter to Jeremy Hunt stated, “The council’s firm view, on legal advice, is that the TSA [the Trust Special Administrator, Matthew Kershaw] had no power under the relevant statutory regime, to consider, or to make recommendations to you about services provided by any NHS body other than South London Healthcare, the trust to which you appointed him. It follows from this that you, in making a decision on the TSA’s recommendations, had no power to make a decision which purports to affect the operation of Lewisham Hospital.”

The council has set up a Legal Challenge Fund to raise the money for the judicial review, and supporters can pay here.

On March 12, Save Lewisham Hospital campaign launched a second judicial review, and they also need to raise money to pay for it.

As their website explains, “The legal action, launched by lawyers Leigh Day on behalf of Save Lewisham Hospital, claims that the decision to downgrade and close services at the hospital is unlawful as the Administrator’s powers, and therefore the Secretary of State’s too, related to South London Healthcare NHS Trust only. They did not extend to the Lewisham Trust.”

Rosa Curling of Leigh Day said, “We have advised our client that the decision taken by Mr. Hunt to substantially cut services at Lewisham Hospital is unlawful. The consultation process which took place about the proposals was flawed, the four tests Mr. Hunt confirmed would have to be satisfied before any reconfiguration proposals could proceed have not been met, and the Secretary of State has misunderstood his own legal powers. We have written to the Secretary of State setting out the basis of our client’s case but to date, he has chosen not to respond. Our client has no option therefore but to issue proceedings and to request that the Court urgently intervene. The campaign is asking the Court to declare Mr. Hunt’s decision unlawful and to quash it, so Mr. Hunt can reconsider.”

The four tests referred to — in addition to the thoroughly valid claims that the TSA exceeded his remit in making decisions about Lewisham — were that the proposals had to have:

support from GP commissioners
strengthened public and patient engagement
clarity on the clinical and evidence base; and
consistency with current and prospective patient choice.

Leigh Day and Save Lewisham Hospital contend — accurately, I believe — that these tests have not been met. The full application for a judicial review is here, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the details of the unjustifiable assault on Lewisham by the TSA and the government.

As Dr. Louise Irvine, the chair of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, said, “We believe the decision to downgrade Lewisham Accident & Emergency and Maternity units was taken unlawfully as it does not satisfy the four tests that Jeremy Hunt himself set for any hospital reconfiguration. We also believe using the special administration process for South London Healthcare Trust to effect a reconfiguration of services in Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust, which is not part of South London Healthcare Trust, was wrong. This issue is of vital importance to the people of Lewisham who risk losing vital local services and are united in their opposition to the decision and their determination to defend our hospital. We look forward to our day in court to challenge Mr. Hunt’s decision, which we are confident we have a very good chance of winning.”

Forthcoming public events

In addition, further public events have already been arranged. This Thursday, March 21, there is a fundraising event for the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign in The Stretch, part of Goldsmiths College Student Union, on Dixons Road, beginning at 7pm, and featuring music and spoken-word poetry from campaign supporters, local residents and Goldsmiths students.

The next big event — which is national in scope — is a lobby of Parliament on Wednesday March 26, beginning at 12 noon, to protest about the government’s intention of sneakily passing secondary legislation, relating to the wretched NHS reform bill passed last year, which would oblige almost all NHS services to be opened up to competition — in other words, to the encroachments of private companies, whose concern is with profits rather than health. See the Facebook page here.

Over 350,000 people signed a 38 Degrees petition resisting these changes, which prompted Liberal Democrat health minister Norman Lamb to state that the key regulations on competition in the NHS would be rewritten. I took this as a victory, although no premature celebration should take place, as the Tories will still do all they can to effect their plans — probably through the slippery use of language which will scare NHS budget holders (in the soon to be introduced Clinical Commissioning Groups) so that they won’t dare resist the depredations of the corporate interests slathering to make a killing out of the NHS.

If you can, please come to this event. As the organisers explain, “If you’re in work take a day off, use up banked overtime, use up a day’s annual leave, get to the lobby. Don’t let the Government wreck the NHS!” For more information call 07904 944771.

Note: There will also be a London-wide “Defend London’s NHS” demonstration in central London on Saturday May 18, beginning at 12 noon in Jubilee Gardens in Waterloo (by the London Eye), followed by a march to the Department of Health and Parliament. Further details to follow soon, but in the meantime see here for the flier on the Keep Our NHS Public website.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

How Long Can the Government Pretend that the Massive Hunger Strike at Guantánamo Doesn’t Exist?

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

On March 14, 2013, 51 attorneys for prisoners at Guantánamo wrote to defense secretary Chuck Hagel to express “urgent and grave concern” about the mass hunger strike that has been taking place at the prison for the last five weeks, involving over a hundred of the 166 men still held — and to urge him “to address the underlying causes of the strike and bring it to a prompt and acceptable end.”

On March 4, some of the attorneys previously wrote to Rear Adm. John W. Smith, Jr., the Commander of Joint Task Force Guantánamo, and Capt. Thomas J. Welsh, the Staff Judge Advocate, reporting “information received from clients about the hunger strike and its effects on the men.” Although they requested an answer to their letter, no response was received, and in the meantime, as they explained in their letter to Chuck Hagel, “we have received additional reports from clients that the strike is ongoing and that the health of the men has continued to deteriorate in alarming and potentially irreparable ways.”

As the lawyers proceeded to explain, “we understand that the hunger strike was precipitated by widespread searches of detainees’ Qur’ans — perceived as religious desecration — as well as searches and confiscation of other personal items, including family letters and photographs, and legal mail, seemingly without provocation or cause. We also understand that these searches occurred against a background of increasingly regressive practices at the prison taking place in recent months, which our clients have described as a return to an older regime at Guantánamo that was widely identified with the mistreatment of detainees. Indeed, the conditions being reported by the men appear to be a significant departure from the way in which the prison has operated over the past several years.”

In addition, of course, the majority of the prisoners have lost hope that they will ever be released. Despite promising to close the prison on taking office over four years ago, President Obama gave in to cynical Congressional opposition to the release of prisoners, after releasing just 71 men, and also imposed his own unacceptable ban on releasing any Yemeni prisoners after a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, recruited in Yemen, tried and failed to blow up a plane on Christmas Day 2009.

Of the 166 men still held, 86 were cleared for release at least three years ago by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force — and some were previously cleared for release by President Bush, between 2004 and 2007. Two-thirds of these men are Yemenis, and, by banning their release, President Obama not only consigned them to indefinite detention on the basis of their nationality alone; he also made a mockery of the official process through which they had been approved for transfer.

In addition, 46 men were designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial, in a disgraceful executive order issued by President Obama two years ago. This was disgraceful because it saw President Obama — the man who promised to close Guantánamo — instead authorizing indefinite detention without charge or trial, on the basis that these particular men were too dangerous to release, even though insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. In fact, this so-called evidence is deeply problematical, having been extracted through torture or other forms of abuse, and/or having been produced by deeply unreliable witnesses. The only concession to critics was Obama’s promise that there would be periodic reviews of the men’s cases. However, it was revealed in December that these reviews have not taken place.

Explaining more about the hunger strike, the attorneys wrote, “We understand that most of the men in Camp 6, which holds the largest number of detainees at Guantánamo, have been on hunger strike since February 6 to protest these practices. We have also received alarming reports of detainees’ deteriorating health, including that men have lost over 20 and 30 pounds, and that at least two dozen men have lost consciousness due to low blood glucose levels, which have dropped to life-threatening levels among some. The information we have reported has been corroborated by every attorney who has visited the base or communicated with their client since February.”

They added, “According to medical experts, irreversible cognitive impairment and physiological damage such as loss of hearing, blindness, and hemorrhage may begin to occur by the 40th day of a hunger strike, and death follows thereafter. We would think officials charged with the care of detainees would consider these events urgent and gravely concerning; instead, JTF-GTMO officials have yet to offer any response other than to brush aside the reports by detainee counsel as ‘falsehoods.’”

This is a disgrace, of course — and especially so because the authorities refuse to accept that it is taking place. As Carol Rosenberg reported for the Miami Herald, March 15 was “the first admission of a protest” acknowledged by the authorities, although it did not go far enough. Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the prison authorities, denied “a widespread phenomenon, as alleged,” but he conceded, “for the first time after weeks of denial,” as Rosenberg put it, “that the number had surged to 14 from the five or six detainees who had for years been considered hunger strikers among the 166 captives at Guantánamo.”

He added that one prisoner was in the hospital on Friday, and, as as Rosenberg put it, that five others “were being fed elsewhere through tubes tethered through their noses into their stomachs.” Eight others “had not yet been sufficiently malnourished to merit tube feedings but had shunned enough consecutive meals and lost enough weight to meet the Pentagon’s Guantánamo definition of a hunger striker.”

The gulf between the prisoners’ statements and the government’s position is still immense however, and unfortunately the government has a terrible reputation for hiding the truth about Guantánamo — including last September, when Adnan Latif, a Yemeni, and a cleared prisoner with mental health problems, died at the prison in circumstances that have not been adequately explained.

In their letter to Chuck Hagel, the attorneys for the prisoners reminded the new defense secretary that, “As a United States Senator, you took the position that mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo could not be tolerated because it was immoral and because it jeopardized the security of the United States.” They added, “You also argued that the continued existence of the prison was one of the reasons why the United States was ‘losing the image war around the world.’”

Words can mean nothing, of course, as we know from the example provided by President Obama, but the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo does not go away by being ignored.

If men are not to die as a result of the hunger strike, senior officials need to act, and they need to act quickly. Pretending there are not fundamental, deep-seated and unacceptable problems at Guantánamo is not the way to do it. Cleared prisoners need freeing, and they need freeing now.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Born in Lewisham: Photos of the Protest to Save Lewisham Hospital, March 16, 2013

Born in Lewisham: The Protest to Save Lewisham Hospital, March 16, 2013, a set on Flickr.

On March 16, 2013, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign organised a protest and publicity event, entitled, “Born in Lewisham,” outside the endangered hospital — serving a population of 270,000 people — on Lewisham High Street.

The campaign was established in October 2012, when Matthew Kershaw, an NHS Special Administrator appointed to deal with the financial problems of a neighbouring trust, the South London Healthcare Trust (based in Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley), recommended that Lewisham Hospital — which is not part of the SLHT and has no financial problems — should merge with one of the SLHT’s hospitals, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, and should have its A&E Department closed and other frontline services — including maternity — severely downgraded. In Lewisham, this would mean tens of thousands of emergencies having to be dealt with elsewhere, as well as 90 percent of Lewisham’s mothers having to give birth outside the borough.

People will die, as they try to reach emergency services many miles away, at rush hour, and, in addition, no one in the government or in the NHS’s senior management can explain how it is that we cannot afford to maintain the excellent maternity and children’s services at Lewisham that currently serve 270,000 people.

The “Born in Lewisham” event on March 16 followed two huge marches, in November and January (see here, here and here), and although Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, approved Matthew Kershaw’s plans on January 31, judicial reviews have been launched by Lewisham Council and the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, on the basis that the Special Administrator exceeded his remit when he included Lewisham in his proposals.

I thoroughly endorse the judicial reviews, although I also believe that it is important for campaigners to target the NHS medical directors who are endorsing savage cuts to services across the whole of the NHS, not just in Lewisham, but across London and the country as a whole (also see here).

In the article to follow, I’ll also mention other events planned for the near future, dealing not just with Lewisham, but also with the entire future of the NHS — although it remains hugely important that the people of Lewisham keep up the momentum of the marches in November and January, which attracted 15,000 and 25,000 people. As a banner during the protest on Saturday stated, “A victory for Lewisham Hospital is a victory for everyone” — or, as it could be stated nstead, “The loss of Lewisham Hospital will be a loss for everyone.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: On Guantánamo Hunger Strike, Andy Worthington Tells RT that Prisoners “Feel They’re in a Living Tomb”

Yesterday, I spoke to RT about the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo, which involves over a hundred of the remaining 166 prisoners. I first discussed it last week in an article entitled, “A Huge Hunger Strike at Guantánamo,” which, I’m glad to note, was very widely read.

The six-minute video is available on the RT website, and I’ll post it here if becomes available on YouTube, but for now, click through to the RT site to watch it.

Below is a transcript of the interview, made available by RT.

“Gitmo prisoners feel they are in a living tomb”

RT, March 14, 2013

There is a palpable sense of despair amongst the Guantánamo Bay prisoners, both those who years ago had been told they would be released and those who were designated for indefinite detention, investigative journalist Andy Worthington told RT.

RT: Some inmates are said to be so sick, they’re coughing up blood. Others are being hospitalized and force-fed. How bad is this hunger strike getting, do you think?

Andy Worthington: Well, it sounds very bad, and the problem that we have is that on the one hand we have the lawyers for the men talking about how over 100 out of the remaining 166 men are on a hunger strike and this strike started last month, and on the other hand we have the Obama administration apparently claiming that there is not very much going on. So, that is not helping us to get any clarity, but of course that has always been the problem with Guantánamo, that this is a very opaque facility, however much the administration — first of all Bush and now Obama — has tried to pretend that they are open about what is happening there. And that isn’t true.

And really, there’s an enormous sense of despair amongst the Guantánamo prisoners. We’ve got over half the men [86 in total] who were told years ago that they were going to be released, who are still held. We’ve got other men who were designated for indefinite detention, which is a terrible thing anyway. Obama issued an executive order authorizing that, but promising that their cases would be reviewed, and they haven’t had their cases reviewed. The men there must feel like they’re in a living tomb.

RT: What will this hunger strike achieve?

Andy Worthington: Well, it is already achieving — I imagine part of what the purpose is, is to let the outside world know that it is not acceptable for these men to be held forever with nobody making any moves to release them, even though, as I say, more than half of them have been cleared for release, but they have been forgotten. And they have primarily been forgotten by the United States government, by the United States media, and by the American people. And that is really not acceptable.

So we are talking about it here, but I’ve noticed that it is filtering out gradually into the mainstream media and is getting the issue discussed. Because clearly the situation that we had for some time now is that President Obama can’t really be bothered to overcome the opposition in Congress, can’t really be bothered to try and secure a decent legacy for himself by revisiting his failed promise to close the prison. Everyone has forgotten about it.

RT: But what about the issue of human rights? Isn’t that a concern for President Obama?

Andy Worthington: Well, it should be of concern. The President claims that the legislation passed under Bush, just after the 9/11 attacks [the Authorization for Use of Military Force], authorizes the detention of prisoners and that therefore it is acceptable for these men to be held. But it isn’t acceptable.

These are still men who aren’t held either as prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention or as criminal suspects who are going to face a trial. Nearly all of them there in Guantánamo are effectively still held as “enemy combatants.” The Bush administration’s plan was to hold people forever without ever being to justify objectively why they were being held.

RT: The US maintains that intelligence gathered at Guantánamo saved American lives. Isn’t that a strong case for keeping the prison open?

Andy Worthington: No, I think this is nonsense. The United States authorities have never officially claimed that any more than a few dozen of the people that they held were people with any connection to terrorism. There has been no evidence provided that the torture of prisoners led to any information that actually foiled terrorist attacks.

What they are left with is a problem mostly of detaining people who have been horribly abused throughout their eleven years in custody. Primarily, it is the opposition within Congress and inactivity in the administration to clear up this terrible, terrible mess that was left by the Bush administration.

And it is now Obama’s prison. It is very much a place where he is not doing anything about it. The people held there, as I say, the majority of them who are supposed to be released who are still being held. That is a terrible indictment, the way President Obama is behaving. And it seems it is down to the prisoners to make the world aware of this situation.

RT: Will media coverage of this case spur President’s Obama’s decision?

Andy Worthington: I hope so. What it needs is to be backed up by sustained reporting about this. And then I would hope for representatives of other governments to try and put pressure on the US. Maybe the home countries of the people who are being held at Guantánamo need to start putting more pressure on him.

As it stands, lawyers for the prisoners have had to go to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which does not have power in the United States, but at least it is a venue where they can raise these issues, because sadly the US is not answerable to anybody about its behavior. And I think what we’re seeing with Guantánamo is a an American problem that they did not want to have to deal with, because there isn’t internally in the United States enough political capital in it.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

While Tyrants Sleep: Photos of Canary Wharf at Night

While Tyrants Sleep: Canary Wharf at Night, a set on Flickr.

On November 14, 2012, as I explained in my previous photo set, “Curious Insomnia: A Journey through Deptford and Millwall to Canary Wharf at Night,” I decided, at 1am, to cycle from my home in Brockley, in south east London, down through Deptford and Greenwich, and through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel to the Isle of Dogs, where I cycled through Millwall, via the former docks and South Quay Plaza (and the DLR station) to Canary Wharf, the multi-towered financial centre and underground shopping complex that has been sucking the lifeblood out of the rest of London since it overcame its early wobbles under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and became a magnet for dodgy unregulated bankers and obsessive materialists during the reign of Tony Blair.

It is, in fact, a place which, as Owen Hatherley explained in an excellent article for the Guardian last year (which I also drew on here), is responsible for “the most spectacular expression of London’s transformation into a city with levels of inequality that previous generations liked to think they’d fought a war to eliminate.”

Hatherley also explained that, as new housing was built — most spectacularly under New Labour, as at Pan Peninsula, discussed here — it “was without exception speculatively built,” and the inflated prices in Canary Wharf “soon forced up rents and mortgages in the surrounding areas,” becoming “a major cause of London’s current acute housing crisis.”

As Hatherley also pointed out, it was under New Labour, when most of its skyscrapers were built, that it “became something yet more malevolent.” He added, “In a piece published at the start of the financial crisis, the late political essayist Peter Gowan called it ‘Wall Street’s Guantánamo,’ the place where the likes of Lehman Brothers could escape the relative rigours of US law and fully indulge in the fictitious capital of credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations. There are few places on earth so completely and utterly implicated in our current discontents, or anywhere so due a serious reckoning.”

Those of you who know me, and who follow my work, know that I am fascinated by Canary Wharf, and have some sort of appalled admiration for some of its architecture and for the scope of its ambition. Mostly, however, I am just appalled, full stop, by the grotesque displays of wealth made visible in these towers that celebrate the unfettered greed and materialism that has come to define modern life.

What alarms me is that, although the bankers crashed the global economy in 2008 and had to be bailed out by us, the taxpayers, apparently on the basis that, if you’re a big enough criminal, you’re “too big to fail” — the super-rich, though slightly winded for a while, bounced back and are now relentlessly flaunting their ill-gotten gains once more.

I have always found this kind of behaviour sickening, and its rationale non-existent,  because there is, genuinely, much, much more to life than money and materialism and status — although if you have to ask me what it is then you’ve missed the point! Moreover, it particularly stinks since the bubble of collective greed burst in 2008, and we ended up with malignant political leaders intent on using it as an excuse to destroy the foundations of civil society and the state provision of services by attacking the poor, the ill, the old, the young, the unemployed and the disabled, and encouraging people not to look at the crimes of the tax evaders and their political facilitators, but, instead, to blame those who had nothing to do with it.

In this world — in which there is no longer a moral compass and all that counts is greed, materialism, self-absorption and the endless protestations of entitlement by the rich, the aspirational and the ambitious — Canary Wharf is the perfect example of a dystopian future that has already come to pass.

Essentially, Canary Wharf, with its jostling phallic towers and its seemingly endless interconnected underground shopping malls, is a city within a city; a gated city, if you like, as the whole of the Canary Wharf Estate is regarded as private land, patrolled by private security guards who look like police but aren’t, from which anyone can be excluded on a whim — and from which even Google’s Street View was prohibited.

So this, my 85th London photo set, records my journey into the heart of Canary Wharf at night, when, it transpired, there is almost no one around. My desire to visit came as a response to a visit a week before, in which I had been hassled by security guards in a handful of locations (photos to follow soon). At 2am, however, those employed on the night shift are considerably more relaxed, and there are very few people around, just a few lowly servants of the self-described “masters of the universe,” cleaning and moving things around.

I didn’t want to push my luck, so I kept the snooping to a minimum, and resisted the desire to photograph the entrances to underground car parks, but I did capture some photos that I’m very pleased with, of the bankers’ palaces at night — plus, to bring me back to earth, a few photos from Deptford High Street at 3am, just before my strange night journey came to an end.

I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them, and I hope to see you soon for more photos of my wanderings around London by night and by day.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Why Sulaiman Abu Ghaith Should Be Tried in Federal Court

If you have the time, please look at “Abu Ghaith and All Terror Suspects Should Be Tried in Federal Courts,” an article I wrote that was published yesterday as part of US News & World Report’s “Debate Club.” In the article, I support the decision to prosecute alleged Al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, recently extradited from Jordan, in a federal court in New York.

If you like the article, please vote for it (click on the “up” arrow just below the heading).

There are seven articles in total in the debate, comprising a variety of viewpoints, and it is important that those of us who believe in justice and the rule of law send a message to those who advocate military commissions, military custody, sending Abu Ghaith to Guantánamo and/or subjecting him to torture, by voting them down in the debate, as their poisonous opinions are groundless and damaging to all notions of justice.

As I point out in my article, terrorism is a crime, and federal courts are the correct venue for trying crimes. The military commission system — which should never have been revived by the Bush administration — is a broken, discredited system that is not fit for purpose, and the suggestion, by lawmakers including Mitch McConnell, that Abu Ghaith should be sent to Guantánamo, where he can be “fulsomely and continuously interrogated,” is a disgrace.

I fully acknowledge that federal courts are problematical for anyone accused of crimes related to terrorism, because disproportionate sentences are common, and acquittals almost non-existent. Statistically, this indicates a dangerous lack of objectivity when terrorism is invoked in relation to Muslims. However, holding people without charge or trial, or subjecting them to trials by military commission (a second class trial system for foreign terror suspects only) isn’t a viable alternative.

We need to make sure that indefinite detention and military commissions are done away with, while simultaneously pushing the US justice system — and the American people — to recognize that there is a problem with the almost 100 percent conviction rate in the cases of Muslims accused of terrorism, the punitive sentences involved and the plea deals that resolve so many cases.

In the article, I also take the opportunity to blame President Obama for not closing Guantánamo, as he promised, and to urge him to find the courage to push for the release of the 86 men (out of 166 in total) who are still held despite being cleared for release between three and four years ago by his own inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force. I did not have additional space in the article, but if I had I would also have urged him to initiate reviews for the 46 others who he promised would have their cases reviewed when he designated them for indefinite detention in an executive order two years ago.

Congress is partly to blame for the fact that 86 cleared prisoners are still held, because of obstacles lawmakers have cynically raised to prevent the prison’s closure, but so too is President Obama, because it was he who imposed a ban on the release of any cleared Yemenis (who make up two-thirds of the cleared prisoners still held), in response to the failed bomb plot in December 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian recruited in Yemen.

In the case of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, I conclude in my article that President Obama made the right call. If you agree, please read the article and vote for it. 

Also, of course, remember that President Obama needs to do much more to close Guantánamo than he has done to date. A version of this article was sent out yesterday as an email to the supporters of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, which I established last year with the attorney Tom Wilner. If you agree with our position, please consider joining the campaign. Just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Quarterly Fundraiser Day 3: Seeking $2000 to Support My Guantánamo Work

Please support my work!

Every three months, I ask you, my friends and supporters, to help me to carry on being an independent investigative journalist, commentator and activist — primarily on Guantánamo and the so-called “war on terror” — by donating to support my work.

Today is the third day of my quarterly fundraiser, and thanks to the generosity of nine friends and supporters, I’ve so far received over $250, for which I’m extremely grateful. I’m now putting out this second call for donations to see if anyone else can help.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500 — or, of course, the equivalent in pounds sterling or any other currency. $25 is just $2 a week to support my work, which, I hope, is good value for money!

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world (just (click on the “Donate” button above), but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

As I explained when launching this fundraiser on Monday, since my last appeal, in December, I have traveled to the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo, on the 11th anniversary of its opening, for which my travel was paid, but not my time. I am used to working for free — at speaking events, on the radio, and even on TV, but I have no institutional support for doing so, and rely on you to keep me working as an independent voice calling for justice.

Although I receive some financial support for my Guantánamo work (from the “Close Guantánamo” campaign and the Future of Freedom Foundation), I am also regularly engaged in two other lines of work for which everything I do is unpaid. One is my opposition to the cynical imposition of an age of austerity in the UK by the Tory-led coalition government, which, in recent months, has primarily involved me campaigning to save NHS services from destruction, both by the government and by senior NHS managers who have forgotten what the health service is for.

I am also engaged in a project to photograph the whole of London by bike, and these unpaid projects sometimes combine — as in my photojournalism for the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign (see here, here, here, here and here), and the use of one of my photos as the main campaigning photo for the latest action, “Born in Lewisham,” taking place this Saturday.

Below, in conclusion, is a video of me talking about Guantánamo, and the urgent need to close the prison, outside the White House on January 11 this year. Please donate if you can so that I can continue to call for the closure of Guantánamo.

My thanks, as ever, for your support.

Andy Worthington

London

March 13, 2012

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Curious Insomnia: Photos of a Journey through Deptford and Millwall to Canary Wharf at Night

Curious Insomnia: A Journey through Deptford and Millwall to Canary Wharf at Night, a set on Flickr.

At 1 am on November 14, 2012, I decided to take a late night bike ride to Canary Wharf, the modern mutant offspring of the City of London. The City is an ancient lawless zone, but it is now rivalled by the lawlessness of the Docklands project initiated under Margaret Thatcher, which expanded hugely under Tony Blair.

Canary Wharf, which I first photographed here, fascinates and repels me. Its towers, with their horribly ostentatious show of wealth, and their disdain for even vaguely concealing how much money can be made through devious behaviour that ought to be illegal — and in many cases is — are visible from almost everywhere, and are particularly dominant from all over south east London, where I live. However, while the buildings are, in some ways, architecturally impressive, that is not all that calls out across the miles when One Canada Square and its phallic companions are glimpsed from afar. The wealth they display is also meant to intimidate and/or dazzle those mere mortals — the majority of us, in other words — who earn in a lifetime what well-paid bankers take home in a year.

I’ll be analysing Canary Wharf further in the article following this one, which features the photos I took in the heart of Canary Wharf. In contrast, this set features the start of my journey, through Deptford and Greenwich, including Deptford High Street, which stands in total contrast to the wealth and rarefied shopping malls of Canary Wharf (which I photographed here). I then cycled through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, and took photos in Millwall, and also of Millwall Inner Dock, South Quay DLR station and the mainly residential developments around them, including the Pan Peninsula towers, luxury high-rises that deliberately scorn the ordinary humans below, with their promotional material celebrating those who “inhabit a private universe.”

For now, I hope you enjoy this photo set, the 84th in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which I began last May. The photos from the heart of Canary Wharf will follow soon.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.