"Guantánamo Prisoners’ Processional" visits UC Berkeley Camp

"Guantánamo Prisoners’ Processional" visits UC Berkeley Campus

Monday April 29, 12 Noon to 2:00 PM

“Prisoners’ Processional” and Vigil at Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley

Press Conference on site at 1:15 PM featuring

• Shahid Buttar, Executive Director, Bills of Rights Defense Committee

• Cecile Pineda, author “Devil's Tango: How I learned the Fukushima Step by Step”

• Stephanie Tang, World Can’t Wait

Mr. Buttar and Ms. Pineda will join the “prisoners” at 1:15 for interviews.

Protesters wearing orange jumpsuits to symbolize Guantánamo prisoners and all other victims of torture will hold a vigil and press conference at Sproul Plaza this Monday.  The hunger strike by the majority of the 166 men still held at Guantánamo now continues into its 12th week with many prisoners reportedly in dangerously deteriorating medical condition.  Lawyers and advocates also report prison conditions of intensifying brutality by military prison staff.

The vast majority of these 166 men have been imprisoned for more than eleven years without any charge or fair trial, with no end to their detention in sight.  Protests and public outcry are growing around the world, demanding that the Obama administration move immediately to humanely address the immediate causes of the hunger strike, and to fulfill its promise to close this infamous prison.  

World Can’t Wait has maintained for years that UC Berkeley Law professor John Yoo should be fired, as well as disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes.    “UC still harbors Yoo on its faculty, despite his history as the Bush-Cheney attorney assigned to write ‘legal’ justifications for illegal torture and rendition,” said World Can’t Wait leader Stephanie Tang today.  “Especially during this hunger strike, the UC community needs to recognize that these prisoners have been the victims of John Yoo’s work product— torture –which is unacceptable and absolutely illegal and immoral.  And then the UC community should act accordingly.”

In light of the new "Report of the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment” – the 600-page report authored by a bipartisan blue-ribbon establishment team which delivers a detailed analysis of the treatment of prisoners after September 11, 2001, including clear and impartial evidence of Yoo’s role – Yoo’s unsuitability to teach at the University of California is once again in the news.

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