May 8, 2013

Dear Supporter,

Take action: Tell Michelle Obama to tell her husband to Close Guantánamo Prison! Join the CODEPINK Mothers Day Thunderclap! Share it on Twitter! Share on Facebook!

For American women, Mother's Day should be a day of joy. But for me, it is a day of grief. Every day is a day of grief for me. My son Abdurahman is a prisoner at Guantánamo, and has been cleared for release since as far back as January 2007. And I need your help to free him.

Abdurahman left Yemen to teach in Pakistan and never returned. I found out he was being held at Guantánamo through a newspaper. When a letter from him finally arrived in the mail, it was so scratched up, I couldn't read my own son's words. Now he is on a hunger strike, and I don't know if he'll still be alive the next time I'm allowed to speak with him by phone, which is once every two months.

Can you imagine what this is like for a mother? A mother's first job is to love and feed her child. To imagine my son in such a loveless place, refusing nourishment to protest his detention; to think of him being painfully force fed--it breaks my heart every second of every day.

The United State's government has stolen my son's youth, and stolen our family's peace and happiness. Don't they realize we are human beings, not stones? That we suffer just like they would if they had lost their children? My younger sons fell into a depression and stopped going to school after Abdurahman's capture. He was their role model, and now they have lost hope. Abdurahman's wife was pregnant when he was taken. He has never met his daughter, who is now 12 years old.

I am grateful for all of you who are fasting for justice for my son and his fellow prisoners at Guantánamo. Now would you please take one more step and tell Michelle Obama to tell her husband that it is time to live up to his promises and close Guantánamo?

I thank you from the bottom of my heart as a mother, my heart that aches, my heart that yearns to hold my son again, to give him his favorite foods, to tell him everything will be all right.

This Mother's Day, you can help me and other mothers reunite with our sons: tell Michelle Obama to tell her husband to close Guantánamo now.

With gratitude,
Om Abdurahman