Over at FireDogLake, Jeff Kaye has a good summary of the unrest at Guantanamo, where the US government is trying to keep a lid on
the protests and hunger strikes roiling the Cuban headquarters of our global experiment in illegal offshore
detention.
“Keeping a lid on” as in forced feeding, night raids, and
keeping reporters out of the facility.
As CounterPunch pointed out, Navi Pillay, head of the UN Commission for Human Rights—whose statements on
the dire human rights situation in Syria always receive front-page notice in
the Western press—had this to say about Guantanamo:
“We must be clear about this: the United States is in clear breach not just of its own
commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to
uphold.”
She also said it should be closed.
Non-American outlets Reuters and the BBC picked up on her statement, as did Iran’s PressTV
and the Russian media. (And, in its retaliation for the Magnitsky bill, Russia included the names of Geoffrey Miller—who, in addition to serving as commander at Guantanamo, advised the Abu Grahib
subsidiary on interrogation best practices, and perhaps deserves a harsher sanction than the withdrawal of his Russian travel privileges—and Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson, who ran the facility during the first Obama administration--in their list of banned Americans.)
But nada in the NYT/WaPo/LA Times universe, as far as I can tell.
Guantanamo is a legal, moral, and political travesty. Unsurprisingly, Candidate Barack Obama called
for its closing. Regrettably, President
Obama was unable to do so. Remarkably,
Chinese detainees were at the heart of the shameful political conundrum.“We must be clear about this: the United States is in clear breach not just of its own
commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to
uphold.”
She also said it should be closed.
Non-American outlets Reuters and the BBC picked up on her statement, as did Iran’s PressTV
and the Russian media. (And, in its retaliation for the Magnitsky bill, Russia included the names of Geoffrey Miller—who, in addition to serving as commander at Guantanamo, advised the Abu Grahib
subsidiary on interrogation best practices, and perhaps deserves a harsher sanction than the withdrawal of his Russian travel privileges—and Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson, who ran the facility during the first Obama administration--in their list of banned Americans.)
But nada in the NYT/WaPo/LA Times universe, as far as I can tell.
The key problem is well-orchestrated political resistance on both sides of the aisle to the necessary precondition for closing Guantanamo--moving detainees off the island and into more conventional custody conditions on the US mainland.
Release of the putatively harmless Uighur detainees into probation in Virginia was meant to be the opening salvo in the campaign to close Guantanamo. But it didn't happen, for the reasons described below, and most of the Uighur detainees were quietly and uncermoniously dumped into whatever bribable foreign jurisdictions that were willing to receive them.
The issue of what to do with troublesome detainees who can't be repatriated or sent into de facto exile, and instead require the continued attention of the US legal system, remains unresolved.
As does the issue of Guantanamo itself.
As of 2013, three Chinese Uighurs are left at Guantanamo. In an update on the five Uighurs stranded on Palau and living in poverty, AP reported:
But officials on Palau say they are not even sure who to contact in Washington. Special envoy Daniel Fried, who negotiated the Palau deal and was in charge of finding placements for cleared detainees at Guantánamo, was transferred to a new job in January. No replacement has been named, which has been widely seen as more evidence that President Obama’s zeal to close Guantánamo – a major campaign promise before his election in 2008 – has waned under congressional opposition.
Here’s an article I wrote in 2009 and updated in 2012 on the Republican campaign to keep
Guantanamo open—and deny President Obama the political momentum that would accrue
from closing it. Uighur Chinese
detainees and Newt Gingrich occupy central roles.
Wonder how many more times I'll be re-running this.
Monday, January 16, 2012
How Newt Gingrich Sabotaged the Closing of Guantanamo
January 2012 marks the 10th melancholy anniversary
of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; if polling is correct, it
will also mark the end of Newt Gingrich’s presidential ambitions, as the
immense, gas-filled Hindenburg of his ego approaches its Lakehurst in South
Carolina.
The two intersect in remarkable fashion.
Gingrich was key to igniting the firestorm of criticism
that prevented the public release of 17 Uighur captives from Guantanamo to
Germany and the United States in early 2009.
Uighurs were considered to be the cutest and cuddliest of
detainees, largely because of a rather bizarre finding that, though they
might be terrorists, if they were terrorists they would be anti-China
terrorists, not anti-US terrorists.
The term of art was “non-enemy combatants”.
The Uighur detainees were championed by politicians across
the board, from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans…until clearing
out Guantanamo became a signature Obama issue, and releasing the Uighurs was
advertised as the first victory of President Obama’s humane post-Bush
post-terror policy.
Obstruction became the name of the game, Newt Gingrich
jumped in, the Democrats stampeded, and the Republicans--including Republican
Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, who advertised himself as the champion of the Uighur
cause--faded into the woodwork.
The high profile Uighur release fell apart.
Subsequently, the Obama administration followed the
precedent of the Bush administration, and quietly dribbled the detainees out
to remote, low profile jurisdictions sufficiently insulated from the wrath of
the PRC: four to Bermuda in June 2009 and six to Palau (an atoll off the east
coast of the Philippines which relies on US aid for a third of its budget; it
was reported they agreed to accept the six Uighurs in return for a $200
million payday). Two are apparently destined for Switzerland. The
last five have refused resettlement to whatever exotic locale the US has
arranged for them, and are fighting in the courts to try to resettle in the
US.
Meanwhile, Guantanamo remains open and an embarrassing
symbol, both of US reliance on extrajudicial detention and harsh
interrogation (which will continue on US military bases and in black offshore
prison no matter what happens to the flagship enterprise in Guantanamo) and
American political gridlock.
Here’s a piece I wrote on the issue in May 2009:
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Xinjiang province in western China. The ones in Guantanamo were captured in Afghanistan in late 2001.