25 Catholic Workers March to Guantanamo to visit the prisoners
Vigil and fast at the Cuban Checkpoint at Glorieta
Most searched by OFAC (Office of Foreign Assetts Control) as they return.

Grace Ritter's Photo Essay   *    Scott Langley's photos   *  witnesstorture.org   *  Susan's Daily Log Story of the Cuban 5

Witness Against Torture

A March to Visit the Prisoners at Guantánamo

“We made this camp for people who would be here forever. You should never think of going home. You'll be here for all your life...Don't worry. We'll keep you alive so you can suffer more.”

-A US interrogator speaking to a juvenile prisoner named Mohamed in Guantánamo*

The detention center at the United States (US) Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was made for the purposes of secrecy, unaccountability and impunity. The few reports that do reach us tell of prisoners - men who are fathers, sons and brothers - without contact with their families, with very little or no contact with attorneys, of interminable detention without legal charge, of rendition, of kidnapping and the sale of prisoners to US authorities, of the desecration of the Qur'an, and of unconscionable prisoner humiliation and abuse. These reports have put the base with its counterpart in Iraq, Abu Ghraib prison, at the center of serious charges of US torture. Despite US government and media attempts to hide it, there is every reason to believe such horrific practices are routine there and in other facilities around the world.

Inspired by the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, we, people of faith from the US, plan to march solemnly to the US Naval Base in order to state without compromise our rejection of torture and abuse and loudly proclaim our stance in defense of human dignity. Recognizing that it degrades not only the humanity of its victims but also that of its perpetrators, we appeal to the soldiers at Guantánamo, our brothers and sisters, to end the torture. We approach the base to inform the world at large and the prisoners held within that their treatment is not countenanced by people of goodwill.

We come with a simple request coming from the mandate to Christians to perform the Works of Mercy: we come to visit the prisoners. As people of faith, we believe our own dignity and humanity are bound up undeniably with the dignity and humanity of all other people. We are driven by faith and conscience to respond to this humanity. We hear the cry of the prisoners when we read of hunger strikes and are compelled to do what little we can, to answer: you are not forgotten.

We come so far to visit the prisoners, to do a Work of Mercy, because the very existence of the detention camps at Guantánamo Bay defies a coherent ethical explanation. Putting detention camps at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base is an effort to hide both the prisoners and the inhuman and illegal practices allowed and enforced from ordinary Americans like ourselves. In our name, and in the name of the war on terrorism, the US government is committing immoral and illegal acts, mocking and ignoring international law - all at a place it is illegal for us even to visit. This secrecy, this silence, cannot go on.

Ordinary citizens have been asked by government and military leaders to tolerate, indeed to fund, the continued violence as we go on with our lives. Mohamed, the prisoner mentioned above, has said, “Before I came to Guantánamo, I had hope. After this, I lost all hope.” We cannot go on with our lives if it means we must tolerate what is happening; while few are guilty of torture, we are all responsible. We do, and we must, believe that we can do better than this.

We hold the treatment of prisoners, especially those, like Mohamed, at Guantánamo Bay, as a mirror to our societal soul - as long as some of us are degraded, all of us are; as long as some of us are chained, none of us are free.

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