Today in 1993, Federal Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of the United States District Court in Brooklyn ordered the closure of a refugee camp at Guantánamo that was being used to detain Haitians who tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In his ruling, Judge Johnson wrote: “Although the defendants euphemistically refer to its Guantánamo operation as…

An idyllic California landscape painting with a prison nestled in the distance greets the visitors as they enter the California Museum of Photography in the fourth stop of the Guantánamo Public Memory Project.  The traveling exhibition was curated by students from eleven universities across the country to raise contemporary issues, such as incarceration, national security,…

June 3, 2013: The government of Yemen issued a statement welcoming Barack Obama’s recent call to allow the release of Yemeni citizens who are detained at Guantánamo despite being cleared for release. The majority of the inmates currently being held at the detention facility have been unanimously cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo by a…

May 29, 2013: Navi Pillay, Chief of Human Rights at the United Nations, lambasted U.S. detention practices at Guantánamo, declaring that the site “has become an ideal recruitment tool for terrorists.” May 28, 2006: The Department of Defense acknowledged that 75 detainees were participating in a prolonged hunger strike. The protest began amid bleak prospects that…

A new article from The Daily Beast explores the Guantánamo Public Memory Project as a novel way to engage the public in exploring the long, contested history of Guantánamo. In describing the Project, author Miranda Green writes: “The Guantánamo Public Memory Project is a traveling exhibit that explores the location’s expansive history, from its establishment in 1898…

The Atlantic has published a timeline of Barack Obama’s efforts to change U.S. detention policy at Guantánamo. The timeline begins on June 24, 2007, when Obama, then a junior senator and presidential hopeful, exclaimed: “We’re going to close Guantanamo. And we’re going to restore habeas corpus. We’re going to lead by example—not just by word but…

A class of 8th grade students from St. Richard’s Episcopal School in Indianapolis, Indiana visited the Guantánamo Public Memory Project’s traveling exhibit earlier this month as part of an assignment to debate the future of the base. Teacher Andrea Neal delivered the lesson to the U.S. History class of 21 students because she wanted them…

May 23, 2012: In a major speech on counterterrorism policy, Barack Obama echoed his call to close the detention center at Guantánamo. While he announced an end to the order banning the transfer of detainees to Yemen, he also acknowledged that a solution does not yet exist for the detainees that “have participated in dangerous…

UCR ARTSblock presents “Geographies of Detention: From Guantánamo to the Golden Gulag”, on view at the California Museum of Photography from June 1 through September 7, 2013.   Presented on two floors of the California Museum of Photography, “Geographies of Detention” offers a nuanced investigation into incarceration and its architectures. One portion of the exhibition highlights work by…

The Miami Herald has created a continuously updated online presentation of the hunger strike at Guantánamo. In addition to tracking the number of inmates that are participating in the strike, being force fed, and being hospitalized, the chart also provides readers with a glimpse of how the event began. As the Herald explains at the…