Guantanamo: Terrorism of the State and Double Standards

The hunger strike taking place in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which more than 100 inmates are participating, according to defense lawyers — while prison authorities insist there are around 40 that are fasting — has already exceeded two months and is continuing amid signs of deteriorating health and an increase of desperation among prisoners.

Last Sunday, the New York Times published a letter signed by the Yemeni prisoner Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, in which he claims to have lost 15 kilograms (33 pounds) since the start of the fast, Feb. 10, and reports inhumane practices by the prison staff against the protest participants, who are force-fed through tubes.

Significantly, one day before the publication, a confrontation occurred between Guantanamo guards and prisoners in which the former used non-lethal weapons against the latter with the pretext of safeguarding the health and security of the detainees.

The degrading and inhumane treatment of those who are subjected to it renders Guantanamo a space where justice is absolutely denied. It serves as an embarrassing example of the criminal network driven by the White House in the time of George W. Bush to kidnap, incarcerate and torture presumed terrorists, or citizens of the Arab and Muslim world that could be considered as such by Washington.

You should remember that the majority of the prisoners on this site have not only been faced with extremely cruel treatment for a decade, but have also endured the denial of practically all of their human rights while being placed in a position of legal limbo: They have neither been judged nor received sentencing from any legal authority, and haven’t been recognized as members of an opposing military force, for which at the very least they would be guaranteed the statute and the rights reserved to prisoners of war.

To this date, and despite the fact that Obama’s own administration has signaled that 87 of the 166 prisoners of Guantanamo don’t represent any threat against the security of the United States and ought to be freed, Washington has decided not to conform to that diagnostic and to keep them in captivity. It also appears that Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo, made during his first presidential campaign, has succumbed to the pressures and real power of the industrial-military complex and the ultraconservative groups of the neighboring nation.

These facts indicate a political, legal and moral degradation from which the superpower has not been able to recuperate, while undermining the moral authority of Washington to condemn terrorist acts like the one that occurred last Monday during the Boston Marathon.

After all, the United States government itself, with the supposed aim of combating terrorism, has been a habitual promoter of actions that fit the category of terrorism of the state: the military bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombing of innocent civilians with unmanned planes — claiming the lives of 175 children in Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan since 2004 — and the persistence of the kidnapping of innocents, 166 of which languish in the concentration camp of Guantanamo, against all ethics and outside any legal framework.