Shaker Aamer’s case represents skewed US-UK relationship, says Conservative MP
Published on Middle East Eye MEE, Oct 17, 2015.
British resident Shaker Aamer has been imprisoned without charge by US authorities since 2001.
A senior UK politician will be taking part in a hunger strike to show support for the last British resident held at the US run Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.
Conservative MP David Davis told Middle East Eye in an interview Friday that he had been persuaded to join a solidarity 24-hour hunger strike this Sunday because of news that Shaker Aamer is on hunger strike himself, protesting against his continuing mistreatment at Guantanamo.
On 25 September, US President Barack Obama gave Congress 30 days notice that Aamer, after nearly 14 years in prison, will be released and returned to the UK, where he has a 13-year-old son he has never met … //
… Redressing the ills of the post 9/11 era is of paramount importance, Davis said, because the Middle East and North Africa will be “the cockpit” of history for at least the next decade.
With war raging across the region, from the chaos of post-Gaddafi Libya to the brutal suffering in Syria’s civil war, and the rise of the Islamic State group in many nations, the key to an effective regional policy remains strikingly simple for Davis.
“Levels of comprehension – and therefore levels of rationality – about the Middle East in Western nations is limited, to put it mildly. I never thought that the George W Bush regime ever understood the Middle East at all. You might want to question their motives – I would first want to question their understanding. The same thing is true of many Western countries.
“We need to get back to understanding [the Middle East] before we can unite the people of the region who want to preserve our collective civilisation.”
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Links:
Objects left on the beach by migrants on Lesvos, on ekathimerini, Oct 16, 2015;
Mohawks stand up against Montreal’s plan to dump sewage in St. Lawrence River, on Waging Non Violence, by Ashoka Jegroo, Oct 15, 2015;
Thousands of drug war prisoners are going home early thanks to years of organizing, on Waging Non Violence, by Victoria Law, Oct 12, 2015;
Reporter gets angry and tells us the REAL news, 2.47 min, uploaded by David Welsh, Oct 9, 2015;
Migrant Routes Southeast Asia, on Missing Migrants Project, Oct 6, 2015: In Southeast Asia, an estimated of 94,000 migrants have made the dangerous voyage by sea since 2014, including 31,000 departures in the first half of 2015.