I'm a United States Naval base in Cuba that hosts a "detainment camp" for militant combatants collected from both Afghanistan and Iraq along with anyone that the United States government might want to get rid of. My presence in Cuba is against the will of the Cuban government and they consider me as an American occupation of the area. The US government currently refuses to give my detainees trials, which could help determine their innocence or guilt.
The use of me as a military prison and torture center has been controversial among human rights organizations concerned about reports of the treatment of detainees. Critics of U.S. detainment policies also question the propriety of using an offshore prison, and the unclear legal status of its detainees (neither prisoners of war, nor tried as common criminals). It is clear, however, that the U.S. kidnappings and treatment of prisoners violates the international law and United Nations Convention Against Torture, which also U.S. has ratified. Critics of protesting organizations argue that constitutional rights have never been afforded for prisoners of war or non-U.S. citizens, however they omit the protections guaranteed by international treaties, among other things, against torture. These treaties are the "Supreme Law of the Land" through the U.S. constitution and also cover the treatment of prisoners in black sites and exported and outsourced torture.
In short, I'm basically a legal black hole. If the US government doesn't like you, they can just haul you off to visit me. They don't care if you haven't done anything illegal and they won't tell you why you have been taken. They won't give you access to legal counsel or any outside correspondence, despite what the Geneva Conventions mandate. The US government will hold you without charge for as long as they want and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
UPDATE: Recently the US Supreme Court has finally caught up with virtually every other international organization and country and human rights group in finding that the US is indeed violating the Geneva Conventions (*GASP!* I know! Who the hell would have thought?) So the Bush administration has said it will now abide by the Geneva Conventions. Tortured detainees rejoice, but oh...wait...not so fast! In political small print the administration also stated that this isn't actually a chance in policy because we have been abiding by the Geneva Conventions the whole time. Confused yet? Yeah, well let me help you out: We won't admit we torture and violate multiple human rights laws and norms, so there is no way in hell we will ever change. Haha, suckers. And here you thought we were going to stop being war criminals! Oh well, the point is, no one in the media chose to report on the fine print (apparently they aren't very concerned with being real journalists), so the world can go on believing that we changed while we keep abusing human rights. Weee!!
Hell, why am I talking so much about myself? There are plenty of others who have plenty to say about me:
"Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law. If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, "ghost detainees" – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring back the practice of "disappearances" so popular with Latin American dictators in the past. According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US." - Amnesty International, May 25, 2005.
"What makes Amnesty's gulag metaphor apt is that Guantánamo is merely one of a chain of shadowy detention camps that also includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other, secret locations run by the intelligence agencies. Each has produced its own stories of abuse, torture and criminal homicide. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a tightly linked global detention system with no accountability in law. Prisoners have been transferred from camp to camp. So have commanding officers. And perhaps not coincidentally, so have specific methods of mistreatment. " - New York Times, June 5, 2005.
"Torture at Guantánamo and elsewhere is yet another example of a presidency that abuses its power and acts as if it is above the law. At the same time the Administration talks about spreading freedom and democracy, the White House is abusing prisoners around the world and spying on innocent Americans without a warrant." - American Civil Liberties Union, Feburary 17, 2006.
"Our interrogations in Guantanamo…were conducted with us chained to the floor for hours on end in circumstances so prolonged that it was practice to have plastic chairs...that could be easily hosed off because prisoners would be forced to urinate during the course of them and were not allowed to go to the toilet. One practice…was “short shackling†where we were forced to squat without a chair with our hands chained between our legs and chained to the floor. If we fell over, the chains would cut into our hands. We would be left in this position for hours before interrogation, during the interrogations (which could last as long as twelve hours), and sometimes for hours while the interrogators left the room. The air conditioning was turned up so high that within minutes we would be freezing. There was strobe lighting and loud music played that was itself a form of torture. Sometimes dogs were brought in to frighten us…Sometimes detainees would be taken to the interrogation room day after day and kept short-shackled without interrogation ever happening, sometimes for weeks on end." - Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, May 13, 2004.
"The Secretary [of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] seems unaware of the requirements of international humanitarian law. As a party to the Geneva Conventions, the United States is required to treat every detained combatant humanely, including unlawful combatants. The United States may not pick and choose among them to decide who is entitled to decent treatment.
The United States is a party to the Geneva Conventions, the laws governing the treatment of persons captured during armed conflict. Every captured fighter is entitled to humane treatment, understood at a minimum to include basic shelter, clothing, food and medical attention. In addition, no detainee – even if suspected of war crimes such as the murder of civilians – may be subjected to torture, corporal punishment, or humiliating or degrading treatment. If captured fighters are tried for crimes, the trials must satisfy certain basic fair trial guarantees.
Prisoners of war (POWs) are entitled to further protections, commensurate with respect for their military status as soldiers. Indeed, the Geneva Conventions provide that prisoners of war must be quartered in conditions that meet the same general standards as the quarters available to the captor..s forces, e.g. the U.S. armed forces. In addition, POW..s prosecuted for war crimes must be tried by the same court under the same rules as the detaining country..s armed forces. In the current conflict, an Afghan POW could not be tried by the proposed military commissions, although they could be tried by an American court-martial.
Under the Geneva Conventions, captured fighters are considered prisoners of war (POWs) if they are members of an adversary state..s armed forces or are part of an identifiable militia group that abides by the laws of war. Al-Qaeda members, who neither wear identifying insignia nor abide by the laws of war, probably would not quality. Taliban soldiers, as the armed forces of Afghanistan, may well be entitled to POW status. If there is doubt about a captured fighter's status as a POW, the Geneva Conventions require that he be treated as such until a competent tribunal determines otherwise." - Human Rights Watch, January 11, 2002.
(...more testimonials coming soon!)
*Sigh* Waterboarding, one of my favorite tortu--err, "enhanced interrogation techniques not outlawed by the Geneva Conventions because our prisoners don't really count as humans". Look at this loser here, it is all fake and perfectly safe and he knows it, and he still can't take even a little bit of it. He even got to go back to the comfort of his home and family instead of back in a cage or being chained to a floor for hours...can we say sissy?
