Yesterday, the usual crowd of students on Locust Walk was joined by a new group — students clad in orange jumpsuits.
The jumpsuits, intended to spark controversy and conversation among Penn students, were donned by members of Penn's Amnesty International chapter and the Penn American Civil Liberties Union in an attempt to raise awareness of the human-rights violations in Guantanamo Bay.
Engineering senior Galina Grigoriev, president of Amnesty International at Penn, stated that the group’s immediate goal is to “grant habeas corpus rights” as well as obtain “more immediate action in providing the prisoners with trials.”
In addition to raising awareness about the conflict, the jumpsuit-clad students on Locust Walk yesterday sought to gather signatures for a petition to speed up the process of closing Guantanamo Bay, which will be sent to Congress members.
On Oct. 17, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which established a military tribunal specifically for people arrested during the War on Terror, according to Daily Pennsylvanian Campus News Editor and Penn ACLU President Rachel Baye, a College junior. This law allows for indefinite detention, and permitted many of the atrocities that occurred at Guantanamo Bay.
Although this past January, President Obama issued an executive order to end the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program and close the detention facilities within a year, this plan has not yet been put into action.
The degrading treatment, discrimination on the basis of religion and violations of the rights of health have sparked the attention of many human rights groups, including our very own Amnesty International.
According to a recent New York Times article, one in seven of 534 Gitmo prisoners let go has returned to terrorism or militant activity — a fact that opposers to the close of Guantanamo Bay have used to support their position.
However, College sophomore Sonali Sanyal, a member of Amnesty, said in response that “the prisoners still deserve the right to due process. It is a part of the constitution with which this country is based upon.”
