-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Gitmo Gulag anti-Torture Protests Targets Southern Command
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Jane Franklin
Miami Herald - Jan. 11, 2008
http://www.miamiherald.com
Protesters target Southern Command
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
About 60 protesters -- many of them wearing trademark orange jumpsuits
- -- staged a street demonstration near the Pentagon's outpost in Doral
Friday -- protesting the sixth anniversary of the opening of the prison
camps at Guant!namo Bay, Cuba.
Morning rush-hour motorists mostly whizzed by the demonstrators, who
were chanting, ''Hey-hey, ho-ho, U.S. out of Guant!namo'' and ''Stop
torture now,'' at a busy intersection at Northwest 87th Avenue and
Doral Boulevard.
A few drivers honked their car and truck horns as protester Rae Newman
of Miami waved a sign declaring, ``Honk 4 Peace.''
''People are somewhat complacent,'' she said, adding that the
horn-honking ``goes in waves, actually. When one person honks, it gives
others the courage to honk.''
The local demonstrators, joined by the national anti-war movement
called Code Pink, were protesting near the U.S. Southern Command as
part of a coordinated series of demonstrations called by Amnesty
International.
Six years ago Friday, the first 20 detainees arrived at the remote U.S.
Navy base in southeast Cuba to open the offshore detention and
interrogation center. Since then, nearly 800 detainees have been held
there -- 275 of whom remain behind barbed wire enclosures as ``enemy
combatants.''
Only two are now formally charged with crimes; two more await charges
and a Pentagon official has said, in the end, the Bush administration
expects to put 90 of the 275 on trial.
The Defense Department, which had no official comment on the
anniversary, calls the prison camps a war-on-terror necessity and says
captives are treated humanely.
Medea Benjamin, Code Pink founder, said the coordinated demonstrations
across the globe were designed to send a message. ``We want the world
to see another face of the American people -- one that believes in
human rights and justice for all.''
Last year, for the fifth anniversary, she led a dozen people to the
Cuban side of the minefield separating the isolated U.S. Navy base from
Cuba proper -- and staged a vigil there. Among them were the mother and
brother of Guant!namo detainee Omar Deghayes, who was released to the
British government last month and is in London awaiting a court
decision on whether he will be extradited to Spain.
The Doral demonstrators fanned out on a sidewalk with banners that also
declared, ''Torture is terror'' and ''Close Guant!namo.'' About a third
wore the jumpsuits and held photos of war-on-terror detainees, both men
since freed and some still in the prison camps.
The protesters marched up a sidewalk toward Southcom, the jumpsuits and
banners serving as quirky street theater in generally businesslike
Doral.
One protester brought a pet rooster, saying it symbolized ``a wake-up
call for America.''
Most of the demonstrators were locals, among them Florida National
Guard soldier Camilo Mejia, 32, a former staff sergeant who was busted
down to private after he was convicted of desertion for refusing to
serve a second tour in Iraq in 2004.
Mejia, now of Sunny Isles, served nine months in an Army prison and is
now appealing his conviction.
Meantime, he said he came to protest for a ''due process'' at
Guant!namo but not in support of the detainees.
``It's not about the people who are there. It's about us. Everybody's
entitled to their day in court. Give them an attorney and charge them
with something.''
Southcom is the Pentagon's outpost for operations in Latin America and
the Caribbean and has supervised the prison camps since before they
opened on Jan. 11, 2002.
(c) 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
*
=================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Our main website: http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHincBiz2i76ou9wQRApU8AJ9d8/aQ0wWlczNtTfmpdYavIeG1cACfX63N
ob7jn543w0shTeoc4LnG6ME=
=pjd2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
