''We are appealing to President Bush and the U.S. government to close Guantánamo Bay now,'' Aurora Parong, director of Amnesty International in the Philippines, said on the sixth anniversary of the opening of the military detention center.
She said the prison camp holds and tortures detainees without charge and ``is an insult to peoples of the world who believe in human rights and the rule of law.''
About 30 protesters carried yellow streamers that read, ''No deals on torture'' and ``Close Guantánamo now!''
It was the first report in what was expected to be a series of coordinated protests around the globe -- called by Amnesty and other human rights groups to coincide with the opening of the first prison camp, called X-Ray, on Jan. 11, 2002.
Organizers have called for months for demonstrators to stage protests at strategic sites in symbolic orange jumpsuits like those worn in the first prison photographs from the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
''We want to make it clear, Amnesty International is against terrorism, but terrorism should be fought within the framework of human rights and justice and within the rule of law,'' Parong said.
U.S. officials say they are currently holding 275 men at Guantánamo as ''enemy combatants,'' among them members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Authorities have said they plan to prosecute about 80 of them before military tribunals.
None are Filipinos, according to Defense Department documents that have identified the detainees across the years.
American officials have repeatedly denied allegations of torture at Guantánamo as part of terror interrogations that began in 2002 after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and hunt down Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks.
