JAMAICANS may be too preoccupied, and understandably so, over the widespread killings, robberies and other crimes that have so seriously tarnished the image of this country, to pay too much attention to a problem of denial of justice at the Guantanamo naval base in neighbouring Cuba.

But neither Caribbean governments nor legal institutions and organisations can pretend to be unaware of the current concerns of international human rights advocates over the callous disregard being shown by the George Bush administration for the basic rights of the Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners of war captured by the American military in Afghanistan and being held at Guantanamo.

They, and other prisoners to be flown from Afghanistan, have been denied the right to be treated as prisoners of war, as urged by the International Red Cross in compliance with the Geneva Convention and, instead, are being expediently treated as “unlawful combatants”, as unilaterally and arrogantly defined by the US government.

Two wrongs, they say, do not make a matter right. And the “Bushism” concept of “if you are not with us (USA), you are with the terrorists” — as articulated by President Bush in the wake of the horrific tragedies unleashed on September 11 by terrorists against the USA — should not so intimidate governments and people in our small subregion of the globe that they fail to speak up against human rights violations by a Washington administration in the “land of the free and home of the brave”.

The implications of such violations for the observance of human rights and democracy in the Western Hemisphere, can hardly miss participants in a three-day regional conference on “Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean” which begins this evening in Barbados. The conference is co-sponsored by the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy of the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the University of the West Indies.

It would be useful to know if OAS secretary-general, Cesar Gaviria, one of the speakers at this evening’s ceremonial opening of the conference, will find the time, or consider it relevant, to express his views on the stand by the USA that violates the Geneva Convention governing the rights of prisoners. The USA, after all, is a significant backer of the OAS’ efforts in the promotion of human rights and democracy in this hemisphere.

Some 400 of the captured Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are being dumped in batches at the controversially-owned United States naval base at Guantanamo.

Scores of them have already been flown, hooded and shackled for some 24 hours in the journey from Afghanistan to the Caribbean, to the shock of those who still believe in justice, in the rule of law, and to the shame of a superpower too anxious for blood-letting revenge.

In one of his more disgraceful public comments, the old political hawk, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, arrogantly declared, in rejecting the contention of the International Red Cross, that those being sent to Guantanamo were not prisoners of war but “unlawful combatants”.

Rumsfeld made it clear that he was more anxious to learn what the prisoners — sorry “combatants” — have to say to their interrogators (“torturers” seem more correct), than in the treatment they get at Guantanamo where they are held in barbwire cages, under special security arrangements.

What is the Bush administration really saying to the global community when it forbids American media from publishing photographs of hooded and shackled Afghans, identified by the USA as either Talibans or al-Qaeda “terrorists”, and refuses to treat them as prisoners of war, entitled to a fair trial under a system of justice it practises at home.

It just so happens that the young American, John Walker, who was captured in Afghanistan and taken as a prisoner of the Taliban forces at war with the USA, is to be tried in a US District Court in the full glare of media publicity. This contrasts with the fate of those at Guantanamo to be tried in secrecy by a military court that can hardly be expected to be fair, having already been condemned from the very top (Bush and Rumsfeld) as “murderers” and “enemies of America”.

After the horrendous tragedies of the terrorists’ strikes of September 11 against the USA, in which about 70 citizens of the Caribbean were among the estimated 4,000 victims, the Bush administration unleashed its unprecedented “war” with Osama bin Laden as public enemy number one.

That war, likely to be extended to other countries, such as feared by Somalia and Iraq, led to many thousands of Afghans, a great many more than the victims of September 11, killed, injured or missing, with widespread destruction in a very poor country whose people have been plagued by tribal and ideological wars for some two decades.

But no signs yet of the elusive Osama bin Laden, as inhumane treatment and violations of their rights as prisoners of war remain the fate of his companions in terrorism, the “unlawful combatants” now in the hands of Uncle Sam.

Is there going to be any expression of dissent, however muted, by the Caribbean Community or any single member government?

Rickey Singh is a Caribbean journalist based in Barbados.