After Guantanamo By Jim Rice, Sojourners.

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/22219/

 

After Guantanamo

 

By Jim Rice, Sojourners. Posted June 13, 2005.

 

The chorus is right; Guantanamo should be closed. But closing ithe

base is just the first step in getting the U.S. to practice what it

preaches about human rights.

 

uantanamo Bay has become not only a symbol of the U.S. government's

hypocrisy and dishonesty - or " disassembling, " as President Bush might

put it - around the war on terror. The prison camp has become one of

the more egregious examples of the cost of unaccountable power.

 

Human rights groups have long documented the abuse of prisoners at

Guantanamo, including desecration of the Quran. (The International

Committee of the Red Cross issued credible reports in 2002 and 2003 on

mistreatment of the Islamic holy book, which last week even the

Pentagon admitted.)

 

The 540 prisoners at the facility have been held incommunicado, denied

access to legal counsel, and, in fact, denied the most basic aspects

of legal process. The Bush administration has given mutually

contradictory rationalizations for its treatment of prisoners there,

claiming on the one hand that those incarcerated are effectively

prisoners of war and in other circumstances that they are terrorist

criminals. Yet the administration has refused to honor either the

Geneva Conventions for treatment of POWs or the rights granted the

accused under U.S. criminal law.

 

Defenders of Guantanamo and the policies it represents are quick to

point out that our treatment of prisoners is far better than that

meted out by the U.S.'s terrorist enemies - or the " gulag " of the

former Soviet Union, for that matter. Fair enough. But if the U.S. is

to continue to claim a place as a world leader for human rights, our

standards must be infinitely higher and conform to or surpass

international norms. We must not be satisfied with merely being

" better " than al Qaeda or Stalin.

 

Former President Jimmy Carter has joined human rights groups, led by

Amnesty International and others, in calling for the closing of

Guantanamo Bay. " The U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment

and a blow to our reputation...because of reports concerning abuses of

prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, " Carter said,

according to an A.P. report. President Bush refused to rule out the

closing of the facility, saying the administration was " exploring all

alternatives " for detaining the prisoners.

 

Guantanamo should be closed. But simply closing the facility - and

either moving the detainees to another location or returning them to

their country of origin - is not enough. If the United States is to

regain any credibility as an advocate of human rights around the

world, it must begin to practice what it preaches in Iraq, in

Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and everywhere else. The erosion of

respect for human rights by U.S. personnel didn't begin at Abu Ghraib

or Guantanamo Bay, and the responsibility for it goes all the way to

the top.