D028 (Close Guantánamo Bay Prison)
House of Deputies Message #122
The House of Deputies informs the House of Bishops that on Jun 24, 2024 it considered resolution D028 (Close Guantánamo Bay Prison). The house acted to:
Adopt with Amendment
Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring,
That the Episcopal Church reaffirm and renew our call from March 2007 (in Executive Council Resolution EXC032007.31) to close and commit to never reopening the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or any similar site, twenty-two years after the first of 780 Muslim men and boys were sent there as detainees, recognizing that indefinite military detention without access to a fair trial is deeply unjust, that the military base in Cuba was used for this purpose to avoid legal and constitutional constraints, and that the torture carried out on many of those who are still detained is a moral stain on the United States; we further recognize that there has been no justice for the victims or families of 9/11 due to this torture and the military commission process; we call upon the U.S. government to use all of their diplomatic leverage to transfer immediately those the sixteen men who have already been cleared for transfer, and for justice to be served for those the five men who have been charged in a way that offers closure for the 9/11 victims’ families, and a swift, responsible, and lawful resolution of the cases of the remaining aging and increasingly ill men; and be it further
Resolved, that this Convention commend the work of The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations for continuing to shine a light on this issue even as prisoners continue to languish without trial, via their action alerts, public advocacy, and a recent webinar hosted by the Office of Government Relations with Presiding Bishop Curry and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.