Ten Years of Guantanamo

The precarious guarantees for the prisoners has led some to ask for the closure of the prison.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Guantanamo was known as one of the most fertile Cuban provinces in the production of sugar cane. Since 1903, when the U.S. took power of the area, it became a famous colonial enclave. And ten years ago, it has gained the sad reputation of being a concentration camp for Islamic terrorist suspects arrested by the U.S. A place where due process rules are violated and where prisoners are subjected to practices that violate human rights.

The past January 11th was the tenth anniversary since the arrival of 20 prisoners to the X-Rays Camp, all Muslim, all male. Sheathed in orange overalls, they came to occupy wire cells under the strict surveillance of American soldiers. It is a geographical area that does not belong to the American territory, even though its army occupies it. Because of this, it has become the ideal venue to place prisoners of the international war against the Islamic fanaticism of al-Qaeda, which three months earlier had provoked the death of more than 3,000 people during the terrorist attacks at the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The American laws were left in suspense, and the irregular practices designed by George Bush’s government for the new situation prevailed.

Since then, 779 prisoners from 30 different nationalities have passed through Guantanamo’s jail. Six committed suicide, 171 have remained in the camp and 584 were freed after not being considered a threat to the country that placed them somewhere on the globe and grouped them under the tropical heat of this Cuban corner. In six years, only 6 trials have taken place, four of which ended with convictions. The jurisdiction in charge is a military group that contemplates the possibility of indefinite arrests without a legal trial.

The conditions in which the prisoners of Guantanamo live and the precarious guarantees that they are granted has led numerous governments, entities like the Amnesty International, associations of lawyers and politicians from several countries, including the U.S., to ask for the closure of the prison. One of the outraged was Barack Obama, who not so long after of being elected president, asked for its closure before 10 January 2010.

But it has been two years since this ultimatum, and the infamous prison remains open. The explanation is that the Republicans have blocked the funds that hold the camp, and there is not even money to move the innocent prisoners back to their home countries. The president had to undergo the situation created by his political enemies. This year, despite being the tenth anniversary of the prison, it is election season and is not suitable for popular campaigns.

Most probably, many of the prisoners that live chained in Guatanamo and labeled with a number are fearsome terrorists. The prisoner US9SA-000063 DP, of Saudi Arabian nationality, is accused of being a suicide pilot that did not get to participate in the attack. But, according to the Declaration of Human Rights, they can aim for a fair trial. Some of those who are free, sometimes after seven or eight years of being prisoners, have mentioned in public the hell that they lived in, and their story belies a country like the U.S., seeming to correspond with a dictatorship.

It is not hard to forecast that, in time, the history will show this concentration camp as an unusual aberration. But how many more anniversaries will have to be mourned before Guantanamo gets closed?