Clad in orange prison jumpsuits, black bags pulled over their heads, the figures cast an odd shadow, as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, past the U.S. Capitol and over to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Jan. 11 demonstration, like hundreds across the globe on that day, was in opposition to holding and torturing detainees at a U.S. military prison.
Guantanamo Bay, the infamous U.S. detention center in Cuba, is again today facing sharp criticism from the international community. Monday, in a statement noting the 10 year anniversary of the opening of the facility, United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay called upon the U.S. to close Guantanamo and take accountability for serious violations – including torture – that has taken place there.
Pillay wrote that “the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained – indefinitely – in clear breach of international law.” She also urged the U.S., for as long as the facility stays open, to ensure that conditions of detention comply fully with human rights standards under international law.
Pillay also said she was disturbed by the government’s failure to allow independent human rights monitoring of the detention conditions at Guantanamo. The criticism, coming in advance of President Obama’s next annual speech, slated for Tuesday, also included a message to the President to take actions in order to correct an entrenched “system of arbitrary detention”.
A checkered past
In an October 2003 interview with Australian TV, then President George H.W. Bush remarked when asked about the United States’ position on torture, “We don’t torture people in America and people who say we do simply know nothing about our country.” At the time, Bush was facing criticism for having opened the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center – just outside U.S. borders on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
The first prisoners – from the war with Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in 2002, after the US Department of Justice advised that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction. The Bush Administration would later argue, after news of human rights abuses at the facility surfaced, that detainees weren’t entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
FBI reports have revealed that beyond detaining prisoners for years without due process, detainees were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves.
Yes, we can, but why haven’t we?
When U.S. President Barak Obama took office three years ago, he pledged to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. However, since than, little has been done to that end. Many, expressing concern and disappointment regarding the failure of the U.S. to close Guantanamo, have been asking, “Why hasn’t President Obama kept his promise to close the infamous prison that will forever stain America’s honor?”, and as one blogger, who penned the aforementioned question concludes, “Thus President Obama, the man heralded as a new kind of politician, is revealed as just another officeholder looking out for his own political fortunes.
The United States had betrayed its commitment to due process and the rule of law, but rectifying that shameful record could not be allowed to impede the president’s political objectives. That demonstrates a perverse set of priorities”.
Guantanamo Bay, which opened in 2002 under the Bush administration, is described as a “extrajudiial detainment and interrogation facility.” Media reports have documented some very egregious human rights violations occurring at the site since its inception, with Amnesty Internationals’ website relaying, “The United States’ detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have become emblematic of the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the U.S. government in the name of fighting terrorism.”
The Washington Post, in an April 2011 article chronicling the “unraveling of Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo”, did interviews with more than 30 current and former activists, administration officials, members of Congress and their staff, (of the Bush and Obama administrations) in order to understand why Guantanamo persists. Many of those interviewed would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
One common theme to emerge in the interviews was the sentiment that “the White House never pressed hard enough on what was supposed to be a signature goal” in its failure to shutter the site, potentially due to other priorities for the administration, like health care, but the article notes that there has been bipartisan support to close Guantanamo for several years – making the failure to do so particularly egregious to some.
Tarnished U.S. image
Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, charges in a recent article commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo, “it’s the longest-standing war prison in US history. Guantanamo has been a catastrophic failure on every front. It has long been past the time for this shameful episode in American history to be brought to a close.”
Romero, referencing documents obtained by the ACLU, refers to the facility as “a perverse laboratory for brutal interrogation methods” and concludes “The reputation of the U.S. as a defender of human rights has been profoundly diminished because of Guantanamo’s continued existence. Our allies have refused to share intelligence out of concern that it will be used in unfair military commissions, and will not extradite terrorism suspects if they will end up in military detention. Perhaps most critically, military officials acknowledge Guantanamo has been used for years as a recruiting tool by our enemies – creating far more terrorists than it has ever held – thereby undermining rather than enhancing our security”.
Critics also find it hard to stomach the alleged hypocrisy inherent in the U.S. decision to keep the facility open. The Center for Constitutional Rights in the U.S. notes, “the United States has welcomed foreign interrogators from recognized human rights abusing regimes onto the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay and given them access to their citizens – and sometimes to non-citizens – detained there”.
Behind closed doors, the United States has allowed security officials from countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Libya, Jordan, China, and Tunisia to interrogate prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo. Detainees have been subjected to threats and abuse from these foreign interrogators, with the active involvement of U.S. forces in Guantanamo”.
A report issued by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights to
the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2007 urged that “The abusive practices employed by the United States in the campaign against terrorism
have severely damaged its credibility as a proponent of human rights.”
Pillay also said on Monday that to “make matters worse” the new National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in December 2011, codifies indefinite military detention, such as that which takes place in Guantanamo, without charge or trial. There are currently around 200 inmates at the detention facility.