Guantánamo a continuing stain on US’s reputation
IT was born out of gunboat diplomacy by a young nation flexing its newly found big-league naval muscles. As the 18th century wound down, the United States inserted itself into yet another effort by the people of Spain’s first colony in the New World to throw off their colonial shackles.
Spain was by then a spent world power, and the US, with its fleet of modern naval ships, wanted to show the world it could hold its own against the European giants who, by then, had colonised much of the world. So the US hijacked the Cuban independence revolution and began the first of three occupations of the largest island in the Caribbean.
With US soldiers ostentatiously marching around, the US also hijacked the independence discussions and employed a legislative device to impose a constitution that suited its purposes. A senator from Connecticut, Orville Platt, inserted an amendment into an army appropriations bill which ended up forming the framework of Cuba’s constitution.
Known as the Platt Amendment, it stuck in the Cubans’ craws for decades and was a constant source of bitterness against the Yanquis who imposed it. The Platt Amendment laid out just how the new independent Cuba should conduct its business, restricting the country’s conduct of foreign policy and commercial relations, and mandating negotiation for military bases on the island.
That’s how, 110 years ago, the United States Navy acquired an open-ended lease to 120 square kilometres of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, near the eastern tip of the island, to serve as a coaling station and rest area for ships not on duty.
The Guantánamo Bay Naval Station is the oldest overseas US naval base in the world, and is the only one in a country with which the US does not have diplomatic relations. The Platt Amendment remained in place for three decades until it was supplanted by a new treaty on relations between the US and Cuba in 1934, negotiated under President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called ‘Good Neighbour Policy’ towards Latin America.
But the US held on to the base, and that became part of the grievances the Castro revolution held against Washington when it took power 54 years ago. Cuba claims that the treaty violates the 1969 Vienna Treaty on the law of treaties, which regards a treaty as void if it were procured by force or the threat thereof.
But in an ironic paradox, the Vienna Treaty also holds that its provisions cannot be applied retroactively.
You would have thought that in this modern age of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines which do not need refuelling over their entire lives and supply ships which can refuel conventionally powered vessels at sea, the US Navy would close an expensive base so close to home.
But not in this case. Where relations between Washington and Havana are concerned, logic deserts even the most hard-headed politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats. Like stubborn children fighting over a decrepit old toy, they tug and pull at each other over this obsolete relic of macho statecraft.
Terrorist acts solidified Guantánamo’s existence
Were it not for 9/11, Guantánamo would now be little more than a curious historic oddity. What put it on today’s map was the war in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, the one in Iraq. Four months after the planes flew into buildings in New York and Washington, US military guards took the first 20 inmates to the base, ironically, on January 11, 2002.
The Bush Administration held the view that the prisoners were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but several rulings by the US Supreme Court found that they were, in fact, entitled to at least the minimal protections of the conventions and even the US military legal system concurred.
Immediately upon assuming residency in the Oval Office four years and three months ago, Barack Obama issued an executive order to close the prison camp there. But four months later, the US Senate voted 90-6 to block the money needed to transfer or release the prisoners held in the desolate camp at Guantánamo, and later, the Congress approved legislation to make it impossible to do anything but let them stay where they are.
Obama’s critics — even friendly ones — observe that he doesn’t appear to regard the issue with any urgency or priority, shrugging his shoulders and pointing to Congressional obstinacy as the reason for his inaction.
He had already ordered officials to prepare a high-security prison in Illinois to accept the prisoners and he could easily have invoked his presidential powers to either veto the legislation or override the restrictions the bills imposed. To make matters worse, after the so-called “underwear bomber” — who had been trained by militants in Yemen — tried to blow up a plane at Christmas of 2009, Obama halted the transfer of prisoners back to Yemen.
This was despite the fact that 126 had been deemed eligible on the grounds that they hadn’t done anything that could be successfully proved in court or who did not pose any significant threat to security.
Today, 166 detainees remain in custody at Guantánamo — some for as long as 11 years — and 86 have been cleared for transfer or release. But they can’t go anywhere because of NIMBY-ism (NIMBY means Not In My Back Yard). Almost none of the members of the US Congress has the moral fibre to put into practice one of the founding principles of their republic that they love to proclaim to all and sundry: habeus corpus — the right of a person under arrest to be taken before a judge to be tried.
It’s an ancient concept that originated with English common law — a prisoner has the right to be released from detention if the authorities don’t have sufficient cause or evidence.
There’s a new wrinkle to the situation — since February more than 100 of the prisoners caged at the naval base are refusing to eat and 21 of them are being force-fed. Tubes are threaded through their noses into their stomachs and liquid food is sent through the tubes.
It’s not a pleasant procedure in the best of circumstances, and when the person objects, as the prisoners invariably do, it can be extremely uncomfortable.
This week, Obama once again took up the case, saying what’s happening in Guantánamo “is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop”. He told a news conference on Tuesday that he did not want any of the hunger strikers to die of starvation and promised to put the issue before the Congress once more. The president says keeping the prison open is not sustainable and its continued existence is a recruitment tool for extremists.
Closing the detention centre won’t be easy — in addition to the implacable opposition of the Congress, a poll last year found seven out of 10 Americans in favour of keeping it open. But keeping the prisoners in limbo indefinitely makes a mockery of the country’s professed principles of human rights, the rule of law and of democracy itself.
In fact, the Guantánamo Naval Station is itself an anachronism which should have been closed years ago. Only obsolete, entrenched attitudes, political inertia and mulish obstinacy keep the base and the detention centre open.