PRISON CHOIRS AND POETS

In a recent post Jim Gordon highlighted some quite sublime poetry written on a cup by a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay.

Is It True?
By Osama Abu Kadir

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?
Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?
Is it true that birds will migrate home again?
Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?
It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.
But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?
Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?
I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.
To be with my children, each one part of me;
To be with my wife and the ones that I love;
To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.
I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.
But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?
We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.
Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still
Justice and compassion remain in this world!

"Shortly after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir travelled to Pakistan to perform charity work in Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for jihad in Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near Jalalabad in November 2001. In his native Jordan, he was known as a dedicated family man who worked as a truck driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number 651."

Yesterday on the BBC news website, there was a link to a choir of prisoners who are on death row in Uganda. I don't know anything about the background to these prisoners crimes, but what a beautiful sound they make.

The African Prisons Project is the brain child of Nottingham University student Alexander McLean. In 2004 he visited prisons in Uganda during his gap year. What he found was truly shocking.
Prisoners in Africa are kept in the most appalling conditions. Many are ill with AIDS and TB. Diseases prevail due to malnutrition and a lack of hygiene, clean water and adequate health care. The overcrowded prisons are controlled by brutal regimes and gang rape is rife.
This project aims to alleviate the suffering of the hundreds of men, women and children imprisoned in Africa.