The 37-metre tall lighthouse is a symbol of the municipality of Maisí. Built in 1862, it is located at the eastern tip of Cuba, in the province of Guantánamo. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
MAISÍ, Cuba, Jul 9 2018 (IPS)

Strong winds agitate the sea that crashes over Punta de Maisí, the most extreme point in eastern Cuba, where no building stands on the coast made up of rocky areas intermingled with vegetation and with sandy areas where people can swim and sunbathe.

A little inland, a white, well-kept lighthouse rises 37 metres above sea level. Standing there since 1862, it is an icon of the municipality of Maisí, in the province of Guantánamo, in the east of this Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million inhabitants.

“Occasionally there’s a cyclone. Matthew recently passed by and devastated this area,” said Hidalgo Matos, who has been the lighthouse keeper for more than 40 years.

Matos was referring to the last major disaster to strike the area, when Hurricane Matthew, category four on the one to five Saffir-Simpson scale, hit Guantánamo on Oct. 4-5, 2016.

Thanks to this rare trade, which has been maintained from generation to generation by the three families who live next to the lighthouse, the 64-year-old Matos has seen from the privileged height of the tower the fury of the sea and the winds from the hurricanes that are devastating Cuba and other Caribbean islands, more and more intensely due to climate change.

“One of the benefits of the area is that the majority of the population makes a living from fishing,” said the lighthouse-keeper.

This is the main reason why coastal populations are reluctant to leave their homes by the sea, and even return after being relocated to safer areas inland.

Facing this and other obstacles, the Cuban authorities in the 1990s began to modify the management of coastal areas, which was accelerated with the implementation in 2017 of the first government plan to address climate change, better known as Life Task.

Currently, more than 193,000 people live in vulnerable areas, in conditions that will only get worse, as the sea level is forecast to rise 27 centimetres by 2050 and 85 centimetres by 2100.

The relocation of coastal communities and the restoration of native landscapes are key to boosting resilience in the face of extreme natural events.

Hidalgo Matos is the keeper of the lighthouse located in Punta de Maisí at the eastern tip of Cuba, in the province of Guantánamo. From his watchtower, he has witnessed the effects of climate change – the increasingly recurrent and extreme natural events. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Scientists say that natural elements of coastal protection such as sandy beaches, sea grasses, reefs and mangroves cushion the tides.

Of the country’s 262 coastal settlements, 121 are estimated to be affected by climate change. Of these, 67 are located on the north coast, which was affected almost in its entirety by the powerful Hurricane Irma in September 2017, and 54 are in the south.

In total, 34,454 people, 11,956 year-round homes, 3,646 holiday homes and 1,383 other facilities are at risk.

Cuban authorities reported that 93 of the 262 coastal settlements had been the target of some form of climate change adaptation and mitigation action by 2016.

Measures for relocation to safer areas were also being carried out in 65 of these communities, 25 had partial plans for housing relocation, 22 had to be completely relocated from the shoreline, and another 56 were to be reaccommodated, rehabilitated and protected.

“There are no plans to move any settlements or people in the municipality because after Cyclone Matthew everything was moved,” said Eddy Pellegrin, a high-level official in the government of Maisí, with a population of 28,752 people who depend mostly on agriculture.

“Since 2015 we have been working on it. From that year to 2017, we relocated some 120 people,” he said in an interview with IPS in Punta de Maisí.

The view towards the mainland from the emblematic lighthouse in the farming town of Maisí, at the eastern tip of Cuba, where the municipal government is implementing several projects to adapt the vulnerable coastline to climate change. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

A total of 840 people live along the 254 km of coastline in this municipality, “who are not in dangerous or vulnerable places,” the official said, discussing the national programme to manage the coastal area that Maisí is preparing to conclude with a local development project.

“There is no need to make new investments in the coastal area, what remains is to plant sea grapes (Coccoloba uvifera) to increase production,” he said of a local development project that consists of planting these bushes typical of the beaches, to restore the natural protective barrier and produce wine from the fruit.

Punta de Maisí and Boca de Jauco are the areas to be reforested with sea grape plants.

Pellegrin added that coconut groves – a key element of Guantánamo’s economy – will be replanted 250 m from the coast.

Maisí is an illustration of the long-term challenges and complexities of coastal management, ranging from the demolition of poorly located homes and facilities, to changing the economic alternatives in those communities that depend on fishing, to major engineering works.

Guantánamo has been hit continuously in recent years by major hurricanes: Sandy (2012), Matthew (2016) and Irma (2017), in addition to the severe drought between 2014 and 2017 that affected virtually the entire country.

“The latest atmospheric phenomena have affected the entire coastal area,” Daysi Sarmiento, an official in the government of the province of Guantánamo, told IPS.

Sports coach Milaydis Griñán lives near the historic Punta de Maisí lighthouse on the eastern tip of the Cuban island. Members of three families have worked as lighthouse keepers for generations. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“Now Baracoa Bay is being dredged,” said Sarmiento, referring to Baracoa, the first town in the area built by the Spaniards in colonial times, which faces the worst coastal risks.

The dredging is part of investments expected to be completed in September to protect Baracoa’s coast, which is highly vulnerable to floods, hurricanes and tsunamis.

By August 2017, the authorities had eliminated more than 900 state facilities and 673 private buildings from beaches nationwide. On the sandy coasts in this area alone, a total of 14,103 irregularly-built constructions were identified at the beginning of the Life Task plan.

The central provinces of Ciego de Avila and Sancti Spíritus are the only ones that today have beaches free of zoning and urban planning violations.

There are at least six laws that protect the coastline in various ways, in particular Decree-Law 212 on “Coastal Area Management”, which has been in force since 2000 and prohibits human activities that accelerate natural soil erosion, a problem that had not been given importance for decades.

“The community has grown further away from the coast,” sports coach Milaydis Griñán told IPS. She defines herself as Cuba’s “first inhabitant” because of the proximity of her humble home to the Punta de Maisí lighthouse, which is still recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Matthew.

“The risks have been high because we are very close to the beach, especially when there is a storm or hurricane or tsunami alert, but we don’t have plans for relocation inland,” she said.

The six freed Guantánamo detainees line up to hold a Uruguayan baby. In this picture, Tunisian Abdul Bin Mohammed Abis Ourgy holds up the infant while Syrian Ali Hussein Muhammed Shaaban watches. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Dec 31 2014 (IPS)

In the summery afternoon of a beachside neighbourhood not far from the Uruguayan capital, nothing could sound more unusual than the Muslim call to prayer chanted by Tunisian Abdul Bin Mohammed Ourgy, a few days after being freed from the United States military prison in Guantánamo, Cuba.

One of the first acts of Ourgy and the five others who arrived in Uruguay Dec. 7, after 12 years behind bars, was to figure out their new coordinates and find the orientation to Mecca, the Saudi city faced by the Muslim world during prayer.Political perversities have placed on their shoulders the burden of demonstrating that prisoners at Guantánamo can be freed without the risk of turning into what, according to Washington's latest version, they never were: terrorists.

It is not surprising that anybody subjected to Guantánamo’s living conditions would find a lifeline in religion, homeland traditions and family memories.

But religion has lost none of its relevance for these men since they were suddenly introduced to a strange culture – Western but not U.S. or European— with a language different from both their native Arabic and from the English they were forced to speak with their jailers in Guantánamo.

The group of four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian is still bound by the silence imposed by Washington regarding their experiences in the prison. IPS met with them for the second time Dec. 30 in the house where the Syrians are living in downtown Montevideo. A few are already speaking some Spanish and struggling to adjust to their new reality.

Contacts with relatives have been established and the men are now looking for ways to reunite with their families, with the support of the Uruguayan government.

Syrian Jihad Deyab – well known because he protested his detention for years through hunger strikes and litigated against the U.S. force-feedings— is gaining strength and hoping to join his wife and three children soon.

His lawyer, Cori Crider, told IPS that “we had appealed Judge Gladys Kessler’s decision denying us relief from various force-feeding practices, when he was released. We have now asked the Court of Appeals to vacate that judgment on the basis that the government ceased its illegal conduct by transferring him, but that request hasn’t been decided.”

Yet “Deyab is still part of the case in which we say the video-tapes of his force-feedings should be made public,” led by 16 media organisations under the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution, and “he very much supports what the media are trying to do,” she said.

After the shock of liberation, the six men are still struggling to fully understand where they are and to match as much as possible their beliefs and expectations for a new life with Uruguay’s social norms.

Difficult, but necessary, is to reconcile the diverse social and political expectations and interests surrounding the group since the government of José Mujica decided to host them as refugees on humanitarian grounds.

With just 3.3 million people, Uruguay is “almost empty,” Palestinian Mohammed Tahamatan told IPS. He finds this is a wonderful fact.

This country was made by successive migratory waves, but it didn’t receive many new immigrants for a long time. On the contrary, it has tended to lose its own population, particularly through young people chasing better opportunities abroad.

However, the economic prosperity of the last decade attracted a modest but constant influx of foreigners: Spaniards, Peruvians, Dominicans, Indians and Pakistanis. This is something new for a society which has become excessively homogenous and whose representations of the Middle East and the Muslim world are still heavy loaded with exoticism.

“Exoticism is not good… and it comes with a certain degree of fear of Islam,” Javier Miranda, human rights director for the Presidency of Uruguay, told IPS. Awareness of this “is part of our own development as a society,” he added.

Social expressions of solidarity with the 42 refugees from the Syrian civil war who arrived in Uruguay last October, and those shown to Guantánamo’s former inmates while they were visiting a street market, are genuine.

But it is yet to be seen how much of it is determined by this sense of exoticism or by the international attention this country has gained for adopting these policies. Furthermore, as the beneficiaries are a small group of people, such solidarity entails a very low economic and social cost.

Such a reception is absent for the Peruvian, Bolivian or Dominican immigrants who escape from poverty in their countries and are not flagged by any governmental campaign. Some of them have even been victims of labour exploitation and trafficking.

For the governing party, the centre-left coalition Frente Amplio, it is vital to ensure the success of the resettlement schemes of the Syrian conflict refugees and the former Guantánamo inmates.

In both cases, Mujica cited the goal of “setting an example” for neighbouring countries. A successful integration would silence critics and ease fears of perceived or real risks. Thus controlling developments and avoiding outbursts become crucial.

Since the release earlier this month of four inmates who were repatriated to Afghanistan, there are now 132 prisoners in Guantánamo, 63 of them cleared for release. Out of the remaining 69, 10 are currently or have been on trial and 59 are labelled as dangerous by authorities who, nevertheless, recognise there is inadequate evidence to prosecute them in court.

At least one of the six men transferred to Uruguay is willing to advocate for more South American countries hosting Guantánamo’s inmates, IPS learned.

The Uruguayan experiment is also subject to U.S. expectations. The most paradoxical is to avoid the outcome that persons unfairly imprisoned for many years become, once free, active enemies of the U.S.

The same government who produced their criminal files declared in 2009 there was no evidence against them and they could be released.

The same government which forced them to fly to Montevideo shackled and blindfolded sent to the Uruguayan authorities a letter ensuring that “there is no information that the above-mentioned individuals were involved in conducting or facilitating terrorist activities against the United States or its partners or allies.”

The same government campaigning for the hosting of further Guantánamo inmates by third countries has a Congress which has banned this possibility in its territory.

Some local analysts in Uruguay have questioned which of the two versions should be believed. If Washington lied in the files, it could be lying now again, they argue.

This analysis ignores a basic guarantee of the rule of law: that it is guilt, not innocence, which must be proven.

The “war against terror” led by the U.S. since 2001 is seriously discredited in Uruguay. But its narrative has coloured public opinion. People have not expressed outright rejection of the six freed men, but opinion polls carried out this year show support of just 20 per cent for their arrival.

Washington insisted on banning any image of the release. Yet the world has already seen the first pictures of these men in the street, at the beach or holding a baby, as featured in this story.

These photos counterbalance the only produced so far by the U.S. military apparatus: the exasperated faces of the inmates with shaved heads and long beards.

Dressed like any Uruguayan men, it would be so easy for them to just blend into the crowd and live their lives in privacy. But they are media celebrities and subjects of surveillance for the intelligence services of a number of countries.

Under all these circumstances, nobody should expect 100 per cent success, not the least because they are traumatised. However, political perversities have placed on their shoulders the burden of demonstrating that prisoners at Guantánamo can be freed without the risk of turning into what, according to Washington’s latest version, they never were: terrorists.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of Military Police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during in-processing to the temporary detention facility on Jan. 11, 2002. Credit: public domain

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 13 2014 (IPS)

Uruguayan President José Mujica bought time for his plan to host six prisoners of Guantánamo, handing over the decision to the winner of the incoming elections. But time is a scarce resource for the inmates of this United States military prison on Cuban soil.

The resettlement of a Palestinian, a Tunisian and four Syrian detainees in Guantánamo is a hot potato for Mujica while his party, the centre-left Broad Front, struggles to pull ahead in the final stretch to general elections set for Oct. 26.“The U.S. is letting them out because they pose no danger to the U.S. or Uruguay or any other country… They are accused of absolutely no wrongdoing and have never been charged with any crime.” -- Laura Pitter of HRW

Out of 149 inmates currently in Guantánamo, a prison established by George W. Bush (2001-2009) to function beyond the law, 79 are cleared for release at least since 2010, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has gone to court on behalf of some of the detainees.

Mujica agreed in March to settle six inmates of this group – following a request by U.S. President Barack Obama — some of them suffering from very poor physical and mental health.

Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan, a 35-year-old Palestinian, is considered at high risk. Diagnosed with major depression, he has engaged in several hunger strikes in the last few years. Born in the West Bank, he was 23 when Pakistani security services arrested him and rendered him to the U.S. According to one of his attorneys, Lauren Carasik, there is not a single piece of evidence against him.

“The travesty of Guantanamo is that some of the men were rounded up not because of reasonable suspicions, but instead because areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan were blanketed with leaflets offering a bounty for ‘suspected terrorists’, sparking a frenzy of lucrative but wrongful accusations,” said Carasik in an op-ed published by Al Jazeera last year.

The CCR claims that 86 percent of the 789 men and teenagers once jailed in Guantánamo since January 2002 were essentially sold at times when the U.S. military offered bounties of around 5,000 dollars per capture.

Syrian Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a married father of four, has also been protesting via an intermittent hunger strike since February 2013. He suffers from extreme weakness and requires a wheelchair. With no charges against him, Washington cleared him for release in 2009.

Dhiab’s case gained notoriety this year when his attorneys challenged the force-feeding method applied by Guantanamo’s jailers against him and other hunger strikers. U.S. judge Gladys Kessler ordered the disclosure of 28 classified videotapes recording the forced cell extraction and forced feeding of Dhiab.

In a statement read by his lawyers in court, Dhiab claimed that he wanted the U.S. public “to see what is going on at the prison today, so they will understand why we are hunger-striking, and why the prison should be closed.” In August, one of his attorneys said he was “just a skeleton”.

Dhiab had lived with his family in Afghanistan, where he ran a business, but had to flee to Pakistan when the war began after 9/11, according to British human rights NGO Reprieve. A few months later, the Pakistani police arrested him and rendered him to the U.S., possibly in exchange for payment.

In a letter urging the U.S. government to proceed with the transfers to Uruguay, the lawyers of the six detainees said in June that a Uruguayan delegation had interviewed the inmates at Guantánamo and extended to them invitations to resettle, “which they gratefully accepted”.

Mujica, a former guerrilla who served 14 years in inhuman conditions, is one of the many critics of Guantánamo. In recent months, he has repeated that the detainees would move to Uruguay as “free men”.

But Washington usually requests that the receiving country monitor the transferred men and ban them from travelling abroad, measures which are beyond Uruguay’s refugee legislation.

In other words, the same fears which have prevented shutting Guantánamo for good, releasing the innocents and bringing evidence-based suspects to U.S. courts have also obstructed the transfers to Uruguay.

The U.S. “needs assistance from other countries in order to close Guantanamo because, as appears to be the case in Uruguay too, irrational fear about transferring detainees to the U.S. is being used for political gain in the U.S. elections,” said Laura Pitter, Human Rights Watch’s senior national security researcher.

“There is no reason whatsoever to fear letting these men come to Uruguay,” she told IPS by email. “The U.S. is letting them out because they pose no danger to the U.S. or Uruguay or any other country… They are accused of absolutely no wrongdoing and have never been charged with any crime.”

In an August interview with this reporter, the director of the Presidency’s Human Rights office, Javier Miranda, said Uruguayan society “harbours some fear of Muslims, and this is part of our growth. Some people have shown this assimilation of Islam and terrorism, which is an utterly false assumption.

“Those men who spent 12 years in a hole in Guantánamo, almost as disappeared persons, have the same right to a shelter as the Syrian refugees,” added Miranda, who successfully supervised the Oct. 9 arrival of a first group of 43 civilians who had fled the Syria civil war and were living in hard conditions in Lebanon.

But the Mujica administration’s failure to publicise the details of this second humanitarian operation and the legal plight and health of every one of the six inmates fuelled rather than assuaged public mistrust.

While 66 percent of one survey’s respondents supported the resettlement of Syrian refugees, the number who rejected the arrival of Guantánamo detainees rose from 50 percent in April to 58 percent in September.

Last month, The New York Times reported that Vice President Joe Biden had called Mujica, “pressing him to resettle the men”. Montevideo swiftly denied any pressure, and stated only Mujica had the authority to decide when the inmates should arrive. But the move paved the way for a heated electoral debate on this issue.

The centre-right opposition National Party, which is polling in second place, took advantage of this inconsistency and accused the government of acting “under pressure of imperialism”.

According to Pitter, Uruguay would do a great service “acknowledging that they recognise the human dignity and human rights of these men, and righting a grave injustice that the U.S. has perpetrated upon them for many years.”

The U.S. will hold elections in November. If the governing Democratic Party fails to retain a majority in the Senate, Republican opposition could add further obstacles to closing Guantánamo.

In the face of this political dysfunction, the best hopes to end the humanitarian crisis will continue to rest on the good will of third countries.

In Uruguay, the Broad Front is confronting its most competitive elections since it first came to power in 2004. After repeating that he alone would decide about Guantánamo, Mujica backtracked last week and announced he would hand over the decision to the incoming elected president.

If the Broad Front wins the election, a few inmates can still dream of travelling to South America before the end of the year. But if the winner is the National Party, Washington might have to re-open the agreement with the new government, no earlier than March 2015.

And for some of the prisoners, it could be too late.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The U.S. government announced Monday it has repatriated two Saudi detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison, less than two weeks after two Algerian detainees were likewise sent back to their home country.

A female soldier observes the first 20 captives at Guantanamo being processed on Jan. 11, 2002. Credit: public domain

Saad Muhammad Husayn Qahtani and Hamood Abdulla Hamood have reportedly been transferred from the military prison to Saudi Arabia, even as U.S. lawmakers debate legislation that supporters say would ease the Barack Obama administration’s efforts to definitively close the detention centre.

“The U.S. has made real progress in responsibly transferring Guantanamo detainees despite the burdensome legislative restrictions that have impeded our efforts,” Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for Guantanamo’s closure, said Monday.

After the announcement a little over a week ago that two other inmates, the Algerians Belkacem Bensayah and Djamel Ameziane, had likewise been repatriated, there are now 160 detainees left at the base, of which 80 have been cleared for release. Rights groups and experts alike here have welcomed the moves.

“Amnesty International USA welcomes the Obama administration’s renewed commitment to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and urges it to resolve all detentions in a manner fully compatible with human rights principles,” Naureen Shah, advocacy advisor at Amnesty International USA, told IPS.

The debate here has primarily focused on the implications for U.S. national security and the Obama administration’s longstanding promise to close the Guantanamo detention centre.

“I think it’s great news that the Obama administration is taking action for those who have been cleared for transfer,” Jennifer Daskal, an assistant professor of law at American University here and a former counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, told IPS. “It’s consistent with what he said he was going to do.”

A legislative shift

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama famously vowed to close the military prison in order to improve the U.S. reputation abroad, a pledge he renewed earlier this year. That he still has not been able to do so has been attributed partially to his own timidity and partially to strong Congressional opposition.

However, recent weeks have seen an increasing momentum around the issue on Capitol Hill, where the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), a major annual appropriations bill, was approved by a majority in the House of Representatives and is set for a vote this week in the Senate.

If passed, a provision within the NDAA would provide the executive branch with more discretion in granting transfers of detainees from the military prison, possibly facilitating the White House’s commitment to Guantanamo’s closure.

“The NDAA is a sign of a shift in the politics around Guantanamo, providing support for the administration to move the detainees that have been cleared out for transfer,” Daskal says.

But while the NDAA may provide the president with substantial support for the prison’s closure, primarily by barring detainees from being transferred to the United States, some experts warn that Obama will need to spend a lot of political capital to actually succeed.

“During the first two years of his administration, Obama’s party controlled both the House and the Senate, and that was the best time to get this done,” Charles Stimson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for detainee affairs under the administration of George W. Bush and currently manager of the National Security Law Programme at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here, told IPS.

“Now, however, if you look at the vagaries of the election calendar, there are other issues, like [health care] and the economy. So, unless Obama spends real political capital on [the Guantanamo] issue, it may not be politically possible.”

At the same time, Stimson noted that the release of the Saudi and Algerian detainees may hint at a possible strategy the White House could consider if it truly wishes to close the prison by 2016.

“Another way the president could do this is by stepping up these transfers, which is also what [the Bush administration] did, and just keep sending these guys off the island,” he said. “Knowing, however, that some of them will come back to activity – there is no such a thing as a risk-free transfer when it comes to Guantanamo.”

Stimson also admits that Obama was handed a particularly complicated task in trying to close Guantanamo.

“I really think that the Obama administration has been doing a good job in evaluating the high risks posed by the detainees that are left at Guantanamo,” he says. “By the time the current administration came to power, there were only those detainees we had decided not to transfer. And those were the toughest cases.”

Yemen issue

One of the most significant problems faced by the Obama administration is the large percentage of Yemeni citizens currently held at Guantanamo. So far, the Yemeni government has been unable to provide the U.S. with guarantees that it will be able to control its ex-detainees.

Yet some warn that policymakers shouldn’t overstate the obstacle posed by the Yemeni government.

“There have actually been some assessments pointing to the possibility of guaranteeing appropriate safeguards” in transferring detainees to Yemen,” American University’s Daskal says, “and the U.S. and Yemeni governments have been discussing the issue.”

Still, she says, repatriating the Yemenis will be a critical part of closing the base, and notes that the Obama administration will ultimately do so only based on the “determination that it’s in the nation’s security interests and that the Yemeni government can in fact provide those assurances.”

Momentum appears to be building in the push to close down the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, where 166 inmates, 86 of whom have been cleared for release, remain held without charges.

On Wednesday, a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing focused specifically on the merits of shuttering the prison. It was the first such meeting in four years, and comes just a few months after U.S. President Barack Obama renewed a pledge he first made in 2008 to close down the detention centre.

U.S. groups advocating for the closure of the facility believe Wednesday’s hearing is another sign that change may be imminent.

“It feels like we are getting to a tipping point on this issue,” Elisa Massimino, president of the Washington-based watchdog group Human Rights First and one of the witnesses at the hearing, told IPS shortly after she gave testimony.

Massimino notes that, in addition to Obama’s recently renewed pledge, the hearing also comes on the heels of new controversies that have put the issue of closing down the prison “back on the radar screen”. She cites revelations of operating costs that are higher than previously understood and the ongoing force-feeding of hunger-striking inmates.

She also points to recent statements by prominent lawmakers, such as Senator John McCain, in favour of shuttering the facility.

The witnesses who spoke Wednesday came from varying backgrounds and expressed vastly different viewpoints. While most were in support of seeing the prison shut down, some continued to highlight its importance as a tool in the ongoing U.S. “war on terror”.

“If Guantanamo is closed, it raises the question of where these terrorists will be sent,” Senator Ted Cruz said at the hearing, referring to inmates being held without charge.

“Radical terrorism remains a live threat,” he added, noting recent attacks on U.S. targets in Boston, Benghazi and Fort Hood, Texas.

Frank Gaffney, a commentator who writes for the Washington Times and whose Centre for Security Policy is viewed by many as a lead proponent of Islamophobic views, accused those advocating for the closure of the prison of forgetting why it was established in the first place.

“We are at war because others attacked us,” Gaffney asserted at the hearing.

He testified that the Guantanamo detention centre exists because there is “no better option”, stating that the prospects of sending some prisoners to other countries and bringing others to the United States are too dangerous to be adopted.

Releasing inmates abroad, Gaffney said, brings about the possibility that they could “return to the battlefield”. Meanwhile, bringing them into the U.S. prison system, he continued, offers the possibility that they could proselytise within U.S. prisons, that “sympathetic judges” could eventually authorise their release, or that a large-scale escape could take place.

Gaffney also warned that shutting down Guantanamo would signal weakness on the part of the United States, potentially encouraging more aggressive behaviour by anti-U.S. forces.

Proponents of closing the facility down cast doubt on many of these claims, however.

“Protecting ourselves can still be accomplished by holding [detainees] in the U.S.,” said Adam Smith, a member of the House of Representatives.

Smith pointed out that, along with a great number of murderers and paedophiles, hundreds of criminals convicted of charges related to terrorism are already being held in high-security U.S. prisons.

“The idea that, instead of having 400 terrorist inmates, we have maybe 484 in the U.S., [and that this] is somehow going to massively increase the threat is just ridiculous on its face,” said Smith.

“Terror-creating institution”

Those in favour of closure also argued Wednesday that, while some detainees would likely engage in anti-U.S. activities if released abroad, the prison’s continued existence actually makes the country less safe.

Paul Eaton, a retired major-general in the U.S. Army, testified that Guantanamo harms the international reputation of the U.S., a sentiment supported by a letter sent yesterday by 26 other generals which stated that “Guantanamo is a symbol of torture and injustice not befitting a nation that is a beacon of liberty to the world.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, corroborated these assertions by saying that practices at Guantanamo “make a myth” of the U.S. legal system.

Eaton also claimed the facility works as a recruiting tool for jihadist groups and creates more motivation for terrorism than it suppresses. He referred to it as a “terror-creating institution”.

“[The prison] facilitates the filling of the ranks of Al-Qaeda and other organisations that would attack the U.S.,” Eaton stated.

Multiple speakers at Wednesday’s hearing denounced the financial costs of the prison, noting that for every inmate there, the U.S. government, which is currently cutting budgets elsewhere, spends around 2.7 million dollars a year. This is far greater than the roughly 78,000 dollars it spends annually on inmates being held at the U.S. system’s highest-security prison, Florence ADX in Colorado.

The Florence prison currently holds the only participant in the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks to be tried in civilian court, Zacarias Moussaoui. It also holds Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and the vigilante known as the “Unabomber”, Ted Kaczynski.

While Massimino of Human Rights First expressed gratitude for Wednesday’s hearing, she told IPS that she lamented the absence of any representative of the Obama administration.

She notes that while there is currently a great deal of popular interest in seeing the prison shut down – indeed, Wednesday’s hearing had to be moved to a larger room due to high public turnout – there remains a lack of adequate political incentive to tackle the issue.

“I give a lot of credit to Senator [Richard] Durbin,” says Massimino, referring to the head of the committee that held the hearing. “This issue does not generate a lot of campaign contributions or press coverage, but he has done a great job in trying to keep it on the radar screen.”

“Bleeding”, “vomiting”, “a quarter or even a third” of bodyweight lost, “torture”. These are characteristic descriptions from testimony by hunger strikers at the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay of their experience being force-fed at the hands of U.S. officials, published in a report released Thursday.

The report, produced by Reprieve, a U.K.-based legal assistance and advocacy group that is representing more than a dozen of the Guantanamo prisoners, collates testimonies from the prisoners’ unclassified letters, calls and discussions with attorneys.“It diminishes the standing of the U.S. in the world that we don’t follow the established ethics of the medical profession." -- Dr. Scott Allen of Physicians for Human Rights

The views “from the inside” presented in these descriptions are extremely disturbing, and advocates say they raise serious questions concerning the United States’ commitment to human rights.

“From a medical standpoint, the force-feeding of a competent hunger striker is a serious violation of ethics,” Dr. Scott Allen, a medical advisor to the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights, told IPS.

Allen spent seven years as a physician working within the U.S. prison system, during which time he dealt with hunger strikers. He points out that force-feeding is counter to the standards of the World Medical Association. Further, those standards have been accepted by the American Medical Association, which has expressed opposition to the practices at Guantanamo Bay.

There are currently some 140 U.S medical personnel tasked with carrying out the force-feedings that are being done to 45 hunger strikers at the detention centre. More than 100 detainees are currently on a hunger strike that has gone on since February, in protest of what they view as their indefinite detention.

The accounts from inmates in the Reprieve report indicate that U.S. practices go even beyond the concerns expressed by Allen and the associations he mentions.

Some of the accounts describe forcible cell extractions (FCEs), as the procedure of physically removing prisoners from their cells and subjecting them to force-feeding is officially known.

The U.S. military has claimed that strikers “present themselves daily, calmly, in a totally cooperative way, to be fed through a tube”. Prisoner accounts of FCEs contradict that claim, however.

“They wanted me to undergo tests and, when I refused, they called in the anti-riot [FCE] squad, who stormed into my hospital room,” Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian detainee who was cleared for release in 2007, is cited in the report as saying. “They shackled my hands and feet to the bed and then force fed me intravenously for twenty-four hours.”

Of the 166 detainees in Guantanamo, 86 have been cleared to be let free, but they remain held in the prison because of complications that have arisen in facilitating their releases.  

Another prisoner quoted by the report, Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian national who was cleared for release in 2009, explains in graphic detail the pain he has experienced as a result of being force-fed.

“I vomited blood for three days. I had a very strong cough and felt that my throat was injured,” Dhiab recounts. “[A] while ago they broke a rib in my chest. After it healed, the FCE again broke the same rib. It happened over and over again and the injury gets worse.”

Adversarial approach

In a manual outlining standard operating procedure for 2013, which was leaked to the press, Guantanamo officials express their approach to hunger-striking patients using terminology reminiscent of war.

“Just as battlefield tactics must change throughout the course of a conflict, the medical responses to Guantanamo detainees who hunger strike has evolved with time,” the manual states.

As Dr. Allen notes, this adversarial approach would constitute a highly atypical stance for medical professionals to take toward their patients. Moreover, he says, it is not one which is likely to solve the issue.

“Handling the strike this way will lead the doctors to lose the trust of their patients,” he says. “And having no trust means there will be little chance of properly resolving the strike.”

The debate over force-feeding has rekindled talk of Guantanamo officials being engaged in torture, a public debate that seemingly ended after President Barack Obama banned the practice of water-boarding (a form of interrogation that simulates drowning) there in 2009.

Indeed, there are accounts in the Reprieve report which explicitly call force-feeding torture.

“The force-feeding itself is simple torture,” explains Shaker Aamer, a Saudi prisoner cleared for released in 2007 and again in 2009. “Now they are using the metal-tipped tubes, forcing them in and pulling them out twice a day, leaving people vomiting on themselves in the restraint chair, and so forth.”

Just as the controversy surrounding water-boarding was viewed by many as damaging to the United States’ international image, so the continuing subjection of inmates to force-feeding may degrade the country in the minds of citizens and governments around the globe, Dr. Allen explained to IPS.

“It diminishes the standing of the U.S. in the world that we don’t follow the established ethics of the medical profession,” he says.

There is currently political pressure building on the administration of President Obama to end the use of force-feeding.

Influential Senators Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin sent a letter to the administration on Wednesday imploring it to end the force-feeding and ultimately close the prison.

“The growing problem of hunger strikes is due to the fact that many detainees have remained in legal limbo for more than a decade and have given up hope,” the letter states. “This should be alarming to all of us, and it is imperative that the Administration outline a formal process to permanently close the Guantanamo facility as soon as possible.” 

Guantanamo captives in January 2002. Credit: US Navy/public domain

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

A federal judge here has taken the unusual step of formally calling on President Barack Obama to halt the forcible feeding of dozens of hunger-striking detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, warning that the practice appears to contravene international law.

But District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said the court system lacks jurisdiction to stop the force-feedings, which have been ongoing since February and currently affect around 45 inmates twice a day. The case had been brought on an emergency basis on behalf of a Syrian detainee, Abu Wa’el Dhiab, who wanted the force-feedings to be stopped for Ramadan.[Obama] has the power to address the hunger strike – he could end it tomorrow by starting to free prisoners his own government has cleared for release.” -- Cori Crider of Reprieve

During the month of Ramadan, which started Tuesday in much of the world, most practicing Muslims are required to fast during the daytime. Three similar motions by other detainees are still pending.

“It is important to stress that this is an issue now of life and death: people are being force-fed and their lives are on the line,” Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a watchdog and legal advocacy group, told IPS.

“Their continuous indefinite detention is a now matter of urgency and should not left to political wrangling. We do think the president has the authority to end not only the continuous indefinite detention but also the cruel, inhumane force-feeding at Guantanamo.”

On Monday, Judge Kessler noted that the courts are legally barred from considering the conditions of detention of anyone the United States has “properly detained as an enemy combatant”.

Yet “there is an individual who does have the authority to address the issue,” she wrote in her decision. “[T]he President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority – and power – to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at GuantanamoBay.”

In May, more than a dozen human rights groups wrote to U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, requesting that he “order the immediate and permanent cessation of all force-feeding of Guantanamo prisoners … capable of forming a rational judgment as to the consequences of refusing food.”

Force-feeding factory

Judge Kessler also outlined a forceful legal and ethical case for why the president should intervene.

“[The] Petitioner has set out in great detail … what appears to be a consensus that force-feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment,” Judge Kessler noted, referencing an argument the United Nations and others have made.

“[I]t is perfectly clear … that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.”

Also on Monday, the U.S. musician and activist Yasiim Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) released a graphic video of himself being force-fed. The clip, produced in conjunction with Reprieve, a legal rights organisation representing Abu Wa’el Dhiab, has since gone viral.

“The judge’s ruling leaves Obama with nowhere to hide,” Cori Crider, Guantanamo attorney and strategic director at Reprieve, said Tuesday. “He has the power to address the hunger strike – he could end it tomorrow by starting to free prisoners his own government has cleared for release.”

On Tuesday, U.S. military personnel at GuantanamoBay confirmed that Muslim detainees required to undergo force-feeding would be fed only when the sun is down, in accordance with religious diktat during Ramadan.

Yet the Pentagon has been careful to state that detainees are receiving such treatment as an “accommodation, not a right”, a reference to the fact that detainees continue to be legally exempt from U.S. protections that take into account religious belief.

“It is really outrageous that Guantanamo commanders are offering this supposedly religious gesture to accommodate Guantanamo detainees’ Ramadan fasting by rearranging the schedule of the force-feedings,” the ACLU’s Dakwar says.

“This adds insult to injury. It’s unacceptable to have the force-feedings in the first place, and therefore it’s beyond the pale to do so after the daily Ramadan fasting.”

Lawyers for Reprieve, meanwhile, have expressed concern that that the night-time force-feeding schedule could pose dangers to detainees’ health.

There will be “just 10 hours and 44 minutes [between sunset and sunrise] for respondents to implement two force-feedings of 45 detainees for up to an hour of feeding time and four hours of total observation time per detainee”, Crider and others warn in a brief filed on Jul. 5.

“[Even] if this can even be achieved, GuantanamoBay will become a veritable force-feeding factory.”

Obama legacy?

According to the U.S. military, 106 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are currently considered to be on hunger strike, protesting what they see as their indefinite detention after many have remained imprisoned without charge after a dozen years. Of these, military officials view 45 detainees to be so weak as to necessitate forceful feedings.

Importantly, nearly all of those receiving force-feedings – including Abu Wa’el Dhiab – have been cleared for release, many for several years. But they remain trapped in a legal limbo due to U.S. laws prohibiting the transfer of some detainees, particularly Yemenis, back to their homeland.

Still, many rights groups have increasingly noted that President Obama has powers available that could alleviate key issues in this process.

Indeed, President Obama himself has expressed sentiments similar to Judge Kessler’s, but has repeatedly insinuated that his hands are tied. In May, during a major national security speech in which he suggested that the U.S. government would begin winding down the “war on terror”, including reviving a push to close Guantanamo, the president directly criticised the force-feedings at the detention centre.

“Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike,” the president stated on May 23. “Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.”

Yet on Monday, Obama’s Department of Justice refused to halt the Ramadan force-feedings. And on Tuesday, White House spokesperson Jay Carney was noncommittal on Judge Kessler’s verdict, again trying to spread responsibility for the situation to Congress.

“The president made clear in April, and I think it holds true today, that we don’t want these individuals to die, and the action being taken is to prevent that from happening,” Carney said.

“[H]e calls on Congress to work with him to ensure that we can lift the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen … But the long-term goal here has been … we need to close this facility because it’s in our [national security] interest to do so.”

Fascism means unlimited surveillance of one's own people and others, made possible by postmodern technology. Credit: Frédéric BISSON/CC-BY-2.0

By Johan Galtung
ALFAZ, Spain, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

The atrocious Second World War left behind lasting damage by lowering our standards for what is marginally acceptable.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

War is bad but if it’s not nuclear war, the limit has not yet been reached.

Fascism is bad, but if it does not come with dictatorship and the elimination of an entire people, the limit has not yet been reached.

Hiroshima, Hitler, Auschwitz are deeply rooted in our minds. And we distort them.

Hiroshima makes us disregard the state terrorism against German and Japanese cities, the killing of citizens of any age and both genders. And Hitler and Auschwitz make us disregard fascism as the pursuit of political goals by means of violence and the threat of violence.

It takes two to make a war, by whatever means. But it takes only one to make fascism, against one’s own people, and/or against others.

What is the essence of fascism? A definition has been given: coupling the pursuit of political goals with massive violence. We have democracy exactly to prevent that, a political game for the pursuit of political goals by nonviolent means, and more particularly by getting the majority, as demonstrated by free and fair elections or referenda, on one’s side.

A wonderful innovation with a logical follow-up: nonviolence even when the majority oversteps lines or limits, for instance, as written into the codes of human rights. The strong state, able and willing to display its force – including through the use of capital punishment – belongs to the essence of fascism.

That means absolute monopoly on power, including the power that does not come out of a gun, including nonviolent power. And it means a view of war as an acceptable activity of the state, normalising, even eternalising war. It means a deep contradiction with an omnipresent enemy, like Aryans against non-Aryans, or Judeo-Christianity against Islam, glorifying the former, demonising the latter.

It means unlimited surveillance of one’s own people and others, made possible by postmodern technology. What matters is fear, that people are afraid and abstain from protests and nonviolent action lest they are singled out for the ultimate punishment: extrajudicial execution.

More important than actually checking everybody’s email and web activity and listening to telephone calls is that people believe this is happening. The trick is to do so indiscriminately, not focusing on suspects only but making people feel that anyone is a potential suspect.

The even more basic trick is to make fascism compatible with democracy. A piece of news comes to mind: “Admitting that British forces tortured Kenyans fighting against colonial rule in the 1950s – the government (has agreed) to compensate 5,228 victims.” (International Herald Tribune, 07-06-2013).

A staggering number, more than 5,000 – for sure there were more. Where was the Mother of Parliaments during this display of fascism? One senses a formula behind this decision, “the security of Britons in Kenya” – “security” being the bridging word between fascism and democracy, sustained by that academically institutionalised paranoia, “security studies”.

There are other ways to make fascism compatible with democracy.

First, a reductionist definition of democracy as multi-party national elections.

Second, making the parties close to identical in matters of “security”, ready to use violence internationally or nationally.

Third, privatising the economy under the heading of “freedom”, the other bridging word, essentially granting the Executive power over the judiciary, the police and the military – a move for which there is already manufactured consent. To arrive at that consent, a permanent crisis with a permanent enemy ready to hit is useful, but there are other approaches.

Just as a crisis defined as “military” catapults the military into power, a crisis defined as “economic” catapults capital into power. If the crisis is that the West has been outcompeted in the real economy, then the finance economy – the huge banks – start handling the trillions under the formula of freedom.

There is a way out, and sooner or later it will be traveled. People pay around 20 percent (in the U.S. they pay half) in tax to the state when they buy goods or services in the real economy – for end consumption – but the finance economy effectively lobbies against even one percent. Even a compromise like five percent would solve the dilemma of Western states that the real economy does not generate a surplus sufficient to run a modern state beyond force.

If freedom is defined as the freedom to use money to make more money, and security as the force to kill the designated enemy wherever he is, then we get a military-financial complex, the successor to the military-industrial complex in deindustrialising societies.

They know their enemies: peace movements and environment movements, threats to security and freedom respectively by not only casting doubts on killing, wealth and inequality but also framing them as counter-productive.

Both movements say that you are in fact producing insecurity and dictatorship. Both operate in the open, are easily infiltrated with spies and provocateurs, thereby eliminating badly needed voices.

So, here we are. Torture as enhanced investigation, de facto camps of concentration like Guantanamo, habeas corpus eliminated. And a U.S. president up front for the gullible, telling progressive tales he never enacts, never mind whether he is a hypocrite or is put up by somebody as a veil over fascist reality.

Those who pull the veil aside – Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden – are criminalised, not those building fascism. The old adage: when democracy is most needed, abolish it.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Protesters outside the White House in January 2012 demonstrate against torture and indefinite detention on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay. Credit: Charles Davis/IPS

By Jared Metzker
WASHINGTON, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Groups promoting human rights here are “cautiously optimistic” that U.S. President Barack Obama’s renewed pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay will be fulfilled.

That optimism is due in part to the language of this year’s proposed U.S. National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), a massive annual appropriations bill that funds much of the U.S. military and is currently being debated in Congress.

“It feels like there is momentum building toward achieving a bipartisan consensus,” Dixon Osburn, director of the law and security program for Human Rights First, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “I’m certainly more optimistic on this than I have been for the last several years.”

In its current form, the 2014 NDAA would give the executive branch, through the secretary of defence, greater authority to remove detainees from the prison, either to transfer them to other facilities or to release them altogether. It would also unblock transfers of detainees to the United States.

The NDAA recently passed through the Senate Armed Service Committee with the provisions related to Guantanamo left intact. These provisions, which would help pave the way for an eventual shutdown of the prison, are expected to be the subject of fierce debate when the Senate votes on the full bill sometime in the coming months.

The current push to close the controversial detention centre is being spearheaded by a renewed pledge made by Obama in late April. At that time, the president spoke in no uncertain terms against the continued existence of the facility, which he had originally pledged to close down at the start of his first term, in 2009."It's not sustainable…the notion that we're going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man's land in perpetuity."
-- U.S. President Barack Obama

“It’s not sustainable…the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity,” Obama stated in April, noting that U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been or are being wound down. “The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried – that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.”

Since that renewed call, powerful members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have come out forcefully in favour of supporting Obama’s efforts to close down the prison. Earlier this month, Senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein (the former a Republican and the latter a Democrat) joined White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on a trip to Guantanamo, afterward releasing a statement advocating its termination.

“We continue to believe that it is in our national interest to end detention at Guantanamo, with a safe and orderly transition of the detainees to other locations,” the statement noted. “We intend to work, with a plan by Congress and the administration together, to take the steps necessary to make that happen.”

Cleared for release

There are currently 166 detainees being held indefinitely at the detention centre in Guantanamo, 86 already determined eligible for released. Due to concerns over where to send them, however, they remain stuck in the prison.

Fifty-six of the 86 inmates cleared for release (and nearly 100 of the 166) are originally from Yemen, a country believed to contain a heavy presence of al-Qaeda affiliates. Previously, a moratorium had been in place preventing repatriation to the country, but last month Obama announced he would lift that moratorium.

Many of the inmates waiting for release are currently being force-fed, following a mass hunger strike that began in February to protest their continued detainment.

“Those who have been cleared are sitting there waiting for the political stalemate to end,” says Osburn.

In addition to human rights concerns, Osburn notes the “exorbitant” costs of holding individuals at Guantanamo. He cites expenses as totalling 1.6 million dollars per detainee per year, a sum much larger than the average cost of holding prisoners in high-security facilities in the United States, which is around 50,000 dollars per year.

Obama’s original pledge to close the prison actually came before he was elected president, in 2008, when he promised that the detention centre would be shuttered within a year of his taking office. Largely due to opposition from Congress, however, the president has failed to follow through on this promise, disappointing human rights advocates.

“We took the president at his word the last time around,” Andrea Prasow, a senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog group, told IPS. “I want to believe it is different this time, but I won’t until I see action.”

Nevertheless, Prasow, too, was “quite hopeful” that action of some kind would be taken on the renewed pledge. She noted that Obama likely views the issue as an important part of his legacy.

“[Obama] is a young president, who will live a long time in this country and see the impact of his decisions,” she said. “Leaving office without having changed this situation would be a grave mistake.”

By Johan Galtung
ALFAZ, Spain, Jun 18 2013 (IPS)

The United States and Colombia are the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas.

Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

The U.S., with its conviction that evil is lurking around every corner, domestic and global, believes it better have the arms to handle those bad guys.

Both countries have among the highest rates of structural violence, and the most unequal distributions of economic wealth, in the world.

There is a difference, though: one country submits its problem to third party mediation, of all places in Havana, facilitated by Cuba and Norway; the other submits its problem to nobody, nor does anyone seem to offer their services.

Colombia admits openly to the world that it does not have sufficient capacity for self-regulation; from the U.S. no such admission has been forthcoming.

Recently there was news from Havana: a breakthrough in the peace negotiations about a rather basic economic issue: land, and land reform – a redistribution of land, and of better land, to small impoverished peasants.

There are four other problems on the agenda: political participation (the problem being real democracy), ceasefire, drugs, and the rights of the victims and the bereaved in a country where four million have been displaced and thousands kidnapped and killed.

Reasons to celebrate? Wait. The class differences in a country ruled by the triumvirate of landowners, the military and clerics (like three brothers in many families – the Iberian heritage) force upon us a sad prediction: there will be one more military coup in the chain of coups, supported by the Church.

Let us not pray. Let us hope for disarmament of the FARC and the other guerrillas (particularly the reactionary paramilitary) and control of the army, lest we end up with Nepal: disarmament to the left, not centre-right.

To produce food, not only land, but also water, seeds, manure and some technology are needed. Water and seeds may become privatised – by Monsanto – so where does the credit to buy these inputs come from? And at what price?

What’s needed is collective, cooperative farming on communal land with direct democracy for decisions, not corruptible multi-party national elections. And can farming compete with drug commissions when drugs change hands until finally traveling via submarines to the U.S.? Or on the long road to the Mexican border?

Small farms cannot compete; cooperatives would do better. Well, let’s hope.

Expand the zones of peace, have them intersect, and aim at all of huge Colombia.

The U.S.: On May 23, President Barack Obama concluded that he should pull back the drones, and close the Guantanamo prison. Does he have the guts to do so, by executive orders, using vetoes?

There will be no military coup in the U.S. There are permanent, structural links between the Pentagon, Congress, the military industry and the media (owned by the former, and for whom news of peace is bad news) designed to keep the war industry going.

That industry has one major purpose: to stamp out any initiative to eliminate the special status of the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency” – like by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, by Iran, now by BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – so that the U.S. can pay by printing money, and even get the naive to buy U.S. bonds, meaning lending the U.S. petro-dollars or China dollars.

Alas, the U.S.’ efforts are self-defeating. The more wars against terror for U.S. security, the more insecurity and terrorism; the more wars to save the dollar, the closer the collapse of the currency of that bankrupt country: by inflation, by stock exchange crashes, by serving debts rather than people.

The synergy of these three factors will catch up with the economy. In the meantime Monsanto is at work, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other lobbies threatening anyone whose voting is not to their liking that they will not be reelected.

The finance industry is at work forcing the administration to withdraw one step behind the other from the tiny measures introduced after the Grand Repression to control the finance industry.

The U.S. Supreme Court did its part of the job granting money to politicians under “freedom of expression.”

And Obama did his job, offering to cut Social Security entitlements in return for some compromise with Republicans, the average retirement package in the U.S. now being only 40 percent of a salary as opposed to 70 percent in developed countries.

Montesquieu’s plan of separating legislative, executive and judiciary power so that they check each other does not work. In the U.S. today all three powers are on the same course set by the finance industry, to which the dollar status is key.

Politicians are bought and cowed and the president once again betrays those who elected him. Democracy does not work. The U.S. blessing – the Occupy Movement – was itself occupied: by armies of FBI agents.

All of this and worse was Colombia’s fate; the answer was FARC, armed revolt. Will there be a similar armed revolt in the U.S., given that the guns are well distributed?

For Anglo-American global direct violence, yes. As the suspected Boston bombers said, an attack on one Muslim is an attack on all Muslims, an eye for an eye – except when it comes to domestic structural violence.

Let us hope for the revival of Montesquieu and democracy or, if not, submission to outside mediation.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama prepares to take the stage as he is introduced at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 24 2013 (IPS)

Responding to growing criticism by human rights groups and foreign governments, U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday announced potentially significant shifts in what his predecessor called the “global war on terror”.

In a major policy address at the National Defense University here, Obama said drone strikes against terrorist suspects abroad will be carried out under substantially more limited conditions than during his first term in office.

He also renewed his drive to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which currently only holds 166 prisoners.

In particular, he announced the lifting of a three-year-old moratorium on repatriating Yemeni detainees to their homeland and the appointment in the near future of senior officials at both the State Department and the Pentagon to expedite the transfer the 30 other prisoners who have been cleared for release to third countries.

In addition, he said he will press Congress to amend and ultimately repeal its 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) against Al-Qaeda and others deemed responsible for the 9/11 attacks “(in order) to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing.”

The AUMF created the legal basis for most of the actions – and alleged excesses — by U.S. military and intelligence agencies against alleged terrorists and their supporters since 9/11.

“The AUMF is now nearly 12 years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core Al-Qaeda is a shell of its former self,” he declared. “Groups like AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves Al-Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.”

“Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states,” he warned.

His remarks gained a cautious – if somewhat sceptical and impatient – welcome from some of the groups that have harshly criticised Obama’s for his failure to make a more decisive break with some of former President George W. Bush’s policies and to close Guantanamo, and his heavy first-term reliance on drone strikes against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist suspects.

“President Obama is right to say that we cannot be on a war footing forever – but the time to take our country off the global warpath and fully restore the rule of law is now, not at some indeterminate future point,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Romero especially praised Obama’s initial moves to transfer detainees at Guantanamo but noted that he had failed to offer a plan to deal with those prisoners who are considered too dangerous to release but who cannot be tried in U.S. courts for lack of admissible evidence. He also called the new curbs on drone strikes “promising” but criticised Obama’s continued defence of targeted killings.

Obama’s speech came amidst growing controversy over his use of drone strikes in countries – particularly Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia – with which the U.S. is not at war. Since 9/11, the U.S. has conducted more than 400 strikes in the three countries with a total death toll estimated to range between 3,300 and nearly 5,000, depending on the source. The vast majority of these strikes were carried out during Obama’s first term.

While top administration officials have claimed that almost all of the victims were suspected high-level terrorists, human rights groups, as well as local sources, have insisted that many civilian non-combatants – as well as low-level members of militant groups — have also been killed.

In a letter sent to Obama last month, some of the country’s leading human rights groups, including the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights First, questioned the legality of the criteria used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to select targets.

Earlier this month, the legal adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Harold Koh, also criticised the administration for the lack of transparency and discipline surrounding the drone programme.

In his speech Thursday, Obama acknowledged the “wide gap” between his government and independent assessments of casualties, but he strongly defended the programme as effective, particularly in crippling Al-Qaeda’s Pakistan-based leadership, legal under the AUMF, and more humane than the alternative in that “(c)onventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage.”

“To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties – not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places – like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu – where terrorists seek a foothold,” he said.

According to a “Fact Sheet” released by the White House, lethal force can be used outside of areas of active hostilities when there is a “near certainty that a terrorist target who poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons” is present and that non-combatants will not be injured or killed. In addition, U.S. officials must determine that capture is not feasible and that local authorities cannot or will not effectively address the threat.

The fact sheet appeared to signal an end to so-called “signature strikes” that have been used against groups of men whose precise is identity is unknown but who, based on surveillance, are believed to be members of Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups.

If the target is a U.S. citizen, such as Anwar Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric who the administration alleged had become an operational leader of AQAP and was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen, Obama said there would be an additional layer of review and that he would engage Congress on the possibility of establishing a secret court or an independent oversight board in the executive branch.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department disclosed that three other U.S. citizens – none of whom were specifically targeted – have been killed in drone strikes outside Afghanistan.

On Guantanamo, where 102 of the 166 remaining detainees are participating in a three-month-old hunger strike, Obama said he would permit the 56 Yemenis there whose have been cleared for release to return home “on a case-by-case basis”. He also re-affirmed his determination to transfer all remaining detainees to super-max or military prisons on U.S. territory – a move that Congress has so far strongly resisted. He also said he would insist that every detainee have access to the courts to review their case.

In addition to addressing the festering drone issue and Guantanamo, however, the main thrust of Thursday’s speech appeared designed to mark what Obama called a “crossroads” in the struggle against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates and how the threat from them has changed.

“Lethal yet less capable Al-Qaeda affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism,” he said. “We must take these threats seriously, and do all we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognise that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.”

“Beyond Afghanistan,” he said later, “we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

Obama also disclosed he had signed a Presidential Policy Guidance Wednesday to codify the more restrictive guidelines governing the use of force.

White House officials who brief reporters before the speech suggested that, among other provisions, the Guidance called for gradually shifting responsibility for drone strikes and targeted killings from the CIA to the Pentagon – a reform long sought by human-rights groups.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

By Robert Stefanicki
WARSAW, May 21 2013 (IPS)

For more than 100 days, detainees at American detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been on hunger strike, drawing international attention back to the prison that U.S. President Barack Obama vowed during his first presidential campaign to close down.

Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer who defends prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Photo courtesy of Ramzi Kassem.

Ramzi Kassem, associate professor of law at the City University of New York, is one of the lawyers who voluntarily defend prisoners of the “war on terror” being held at Guantanamo Bay. He currently represents seven detainees of various nationalities at Guantanamo and one at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

The facility was established in January 2002 by the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush to hold alleged enemies in the so-called global war on terror.

As pressure from the strike grew, Obama said on Apr. 30 that he would try again to close Guantanamo, despite persistent congressional opposition. “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” the president said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing.”

In an interview with IPS correspondent Robert Stefanicki, Kassem described the brutal manner in which detainees are force-fed, the legal situation of the prisoners, and how the experience has been unique for him.

Q: What is the current scope of the hunger strike?

A: I was at Guantanamo on Feb. 6 this year, and on that day my client told me that the hunger strike had begun. Now even the U.S. government admits that more than 100 prisoners out of 166 are protesting.

But based on information from my clients, in reality, all of them are on strike, with the exception of those who are sick, old and “high value” detainees kept in complete isolation. The discrepancy comes from the fact that the U.S. government has a narrow definition of a hunger strike, just like it has a narrow definition of torture.

Q: Why are they protesting?

A: My client Moaz al-Alawi told me he is refusing food and drink to protest his indefinite imprisonment without charge and without fair process. This is the only way for prisoners to exercise their autonomy and dignity.

Those people were taken from their families over a decade ago. Very few have been tried or charged. Over half of Guantanamo’s current population has been approved for release by various U.S. security agencies: the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Defence."The U.S. government has a narrow definition of a hunger strike, just like it has a narrow definition of torture."
-- Ramzi Kassem

Yet they are still in prison. One of my clients, Shaker Aamer, was cleared for release by the Bush and Obama administrations, and the UK government has been demanding his freedom for years, but he is still there, now on hunger strike.

Q: Do the prisoners have concrete demands?

A: The prisoners want Barack Obama to deliver on his promise to close the prison and send them home. Until the government takes some concrete steps in that direction, I think the hunger strike will continue. It may stop when some people are released, beginning with those cleared for release long ago.

Q: What are U.S. authorities doing to stop the protest?

A: Several prisoners are being force-fed. Force-feeding someone against his or her will is a violation of medical ethics and international law. Other prisoners in Guantanamo refuse food from their captors but accept feeding; they protest by making the U.S. military feed them by tube.

Although it is legal to feed those men, it is still illegal to do it in such a brutal way – sending five guards to take the prisoner violently, beat him up, restrain him in a chair, and tie down his arms, legs and head, so he cannot move. Then they put the tube through his nose down to the stomach. No anesthetic or lubricant.

Q: Do your clients claim innocence?

A: The fundamental concept in any legal system is that one is innocent until proven guilty. In this case you have people who have not even been charged.

At its peak, Guantanamo had 800 inmates. Now it has 166. The majority was released unilaterally by the U.S. government, not by court order.

I’ve seen several cases where the evidence did not support the accusation. When those cases were moved forward to trial level, federal judges ruled in favour of the prisoners in over 75 percent of the cases.

I am not saying that there aren’t any criminals at Guantanamo. If they are suspected criminals, they should be charged in a court of law that recognises the basic principles of fair process: presumption of innocence, no secret evidence, reliable evidence not extracted under torture.

Some families of my clients told me, “If my son or my husband did anything wrong, charge him. If he is convicted by a fair court, we would not have any objections. If you are not going to charge him, then release him.”

Q: Why is the U.S. government reluctant to bring Guantanamo detainees to court?

A: The U.S. government is reluctant because if you have torture, the case does not fly in court. All the prisoners of Guantanamo have been tortured one way or another.

Q: Are the concerns that released prisoners could return to terrorist activities justified?

A: When we say “return”, we assume that they were there. There is no proof of that. Also, there is no empirical evidence for the concern that they may engage in something wrong after release.

Even if you believe in U.S. government numbers – and I don’t – 77 percent of prisoners from Guantanamo have gone back to normal peaceful life.

Q: How is working at Guantanamo unique for a lawyer?

A: First, we have to fight for access to our clients. Then we stumble over numerous other restrictions: requirements of being a U.S. citizen, security clearance by the FBI, traveling to Cuba to meet the client.

In a normal criminal case, when given a report that the government wants to use against my client, first I would review this report with him. In Guantanamo such a report is classified, not to be shared with the client, so I have to develop the defence on my own—a big handicap.

Q: Were you surprised by recent revelations that authorities in Guantanamo listen to the conversations between prisoners and their lawyers?

A: For us it was confirmation, not a revelation. In 2005, when I first met with my clients in Guantanamo, I did not believe them when they said conversations were being recorded. But now I know my clients have always been right.

The prosecution at the military commission admitted that smoke detectors are in fact cameras and microphones. The government may not use these recordings in court against my clients, but the intelligence services are using them for whatever purposes they want.

Q: Do the lawyers at Guantanamo feel helpless?

A: We try to change the situation as much as we can. Our role is not necessarily to win in court. We have to amplify the voices of our clients to ensure they are heard by the media, NGOs and the public.

News from Guantanamo pressured the U.S. government to release prisoners. I hope this time pressure from the hunger strike will bring real change: closing Guantanamo, a place that has no right to exist.

Excerpt:

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, May 15 2013 (IPS)

Eighteen days ago, Diane Wilson, a 65-year-old fisherwoman from Texas, decided to go on a hunger strike.

Diane Wilson protesting outside the White House. Credit: Ted Majdosz

Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Wilson has been protesting outside the White House gates for over two weeks now. Her demand: Shut down Guantanamo Bay prison.

U.S. President Barack Obama has come under heavy criticism for his failure to close down the facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Obama has blamed the Congress for not supporting the closure. But experts and activists suggest that Obama can at least start the process by transferring detainees who have been cleared of all charges.

The detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay opened in 2002. According to reports, 100 out of 166 prisoners are on hunger strike. Some of the prisoners are being force-fed. Human rights groups have strongly condemned this technique of force-feeding prisoners, labeling it a form of torture.

This is not the first time Guantanamo Bay prison has witnessed hunger strikes. The first one dates back to 2005 where close to 200 detainees were on hunger strike.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What do you want to achieve through this hunger strike? As you know, many prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison have been cleared of all charges, but some are still awaiting trial.

A: The facility should be closed down – this is what I want. I am fasting in solidarity with those prisoners at Guantanamo, simply because they want justice. It is pretty much well known that President Obama can shut down Guantanamo right now. He can do it. He should have done it yesterday.

Q: What would you do if your body just gives up, given that you are a 65-year-old woman surviving on water, a pinch of salt and a potassium tablet for 17 days now?

A: Whenever such thoughts cross my mind, I think about those men in Guantanamo."I am a constant reminder of the conditions under which the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay live." -- Diane Wilson

I get to lay down on a soft bed at night. I get to talk with people and I don’t have to sit in a cold, freezing room. I am not humiliated and tortured and I think if they can do it, I can do it.

Moreover, this is not my first time fasting for many days at a stretch. I had fasted for 30 days. The longest I had fasted was for 45 days when I was protesting to stop Valero from processing tar sands in Houston, Texas. I was little bit younger then, but age definitely takes its toll. This is early in the game though.

Basically, I am an optimistic person and I really believe that people can make a difference. In a way I have surrendered to the fast. I will take it as far as I can. I don’t mind collapsing. All I got to do is think of those men in Guantanamo. I know we can shut down the facility, and if required I am ready to go that far.

Q: Why did you choose the White House as the venue for your protest?

A: I am protesting directly in front of the White House. It is a strategic zone. A few days ago I locked myself to the White House gates. I wear an orange jumpsuit and makeshift chains round my legs and neck. I also wear a black hood over my face. This is my way of representing those men in Guantanamo in front of the Obama administration.

I am a constant reminder of the conditions under which the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay live. To propel any change, you have to be in their faces, and I am in their face.

Q: How do people react when they see you protesting outside the White House?

A: Sometimes people know that you are going to be there protesting. Sometimes people out of the blue come up and stand there. Sometimes people are just passing by and they agree with us. I would say almost 90 percent of the people that we speak to are in total agreement with our cause.

There are a lot of children who are brought to see the White House and they are always very curious. We got a huge poster of Obama with a statement that says Guantanamo is inefficient, expensive and in no way keeps America safe. In fact it is a recruiting tool because of the way the prisoners are being treated.

There are a lot of international guests and they are always curious and many people come and speak to us. We have had senators coming up and telling us that we were doing a good job. Actually some came up to us and shook our hands. They said that we should keep it up. In fact, it is a matter of keeping up. That is what it is.

Q: Who is your inspiration?

A: I take a lot of my inspiration from Gandhi. He is my man.

Q: What do you see yourself as – a political activist or an environmental activist or a fisherwoman?

A: When people ask me, I say I am a fisherwoman. I am a fourth generation shrimper. I did not do anything until I reached 40 and I am a really late bloomer.

I think there are a lot of problems with the recent movements – you got the environmental, you got the indigenous, you got the human rights and they tend to remain in separate camps. But there is a connection between all of them.

I guess because I am a fisherwoman and I lived my life on the bay and there is no sense of boundaries so my activism has flowed.

Q: What has been the reaction from your family?

A: I generally don’t tell them what I am doing and I let them find out. My family members are by and large Republicans and they love George Bush. They don’t like this kind of out there and in your face like action from me. So it is not fun.

Q: Diane, you are the author of book called “An Unreasonable Woman”. Do you think you are being unreasonable in your demands?

A: No, I am not unreasonable. I am asking for these men’s lives.

Excerpt:

Dragging Guantanamo captive. Shane T. McCoy was a Navy photographer, the only official photographer present on Jan. 11, 2002, the day the camp was opened. Credit: Shane T. McCoy/public domain

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 1 2013 (IPS)

With at least 100 detainees now participating in a three-month-old hunger strike, U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday reiterated his earlier denunciations of the Guantanamo detention facility and blamed Congress for preventing its closure.

Speaking at a White House news conference, he said he has asked his staff “to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively” and promised to “re-engage with Congress to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interest of the American people. And it’s not sustainable.”"The notion that we’re going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity...that is contrary to who we are." -- U.S. President Barack Obama

“I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” he said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens co-operation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

His remarks followed the announcement that the Navy has sent some 40 additional medical personnel to Guantanamo to deal with the spreading strike.

At least 21 of the strikers, five of whom have been hospitalised, are reportedly being force-fed in a procedure which the American Medical Association (AMA) has denounced as a violation of the profession’s “core ethical values”.

Obama, however, indicated Tuesday that he supported these measures. “I don’t want these individuals to die,” he said.

While welcoming Obama’s renewed commitment to close the prison, attorneys for detainees and human rights groups stressed that Obama could take a series of steps without Congress to improve the situation, notably by repatriating more than half of the remaining 166 detainees.

“Congress is certainly responsible for imposing unprecedented restrictions on detainee transfers, but President Obama still has the power to transfer men right now,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a leader in the legal battle over Guantanamo since terrorist suspects were first sent there from Afghanistan and Pakistan in early 2002.

“He should use the certification/waiver process created by Congress to transfer detainees, starting with the 86 men who have been cleared for release,” the New York-based group said.

Under a 2012 law, the secretary of defence may order detainees returned to their homelands or to third countries if he certifies on a case-by-case basis that they will pose no future threat to U.S. national security.

Eighty-six prisoners, including 56 Yemenis, have been cleared for release by Pentagon review boards to date, but the administration has not yet certified them, apparently due to fears that that if any of them are subsequently implicated in anti-U.S. terrorist activity, the political backlash could be too costly.

According to a recent U.S. intelligence study, between 16 and 27 percent of previously released detainees have participated in terrorism since they left Guantanamo.

“(The law) as written allows the president to transfer individuals if it’s in the national security interest of the United States,” noted Carlos Warner, who represents 11 detainees. “The president’s statement made clear that Guantanamo negatively impacts our national security, (so) the question is not whether the administration has the authority to transfer innocent men, but whether it has the political courage to do so.”

Whether Obama’s strong remarks Tuesday signal a new determination on his part and that of his new Pentagon chief, Chuck Hagel, to take advantage of the certification authority under the 2012 law remains unclear, although his vow to consult with Congress suggested to some observers that he would be seeking more political cover before taking such a step.

“(U)ltimately, we’re going to need some help from Congress, and I’m going to ask some folks over there who care about fighting terrorism but also care about who we are as a people to step up and help me on it,” he said.

The administration of President George W. Bush detained a total of 779 suspected terrorists at Guantanamo but had repatriated some two-thirds of them to their homelands or third countries by the time Obama promised on his first day in office in January 2009 to close the facility within one year.

His efforts to do so, however, were blocked by Congress which enacted legislation preventing the transfer of detainees to U.S. soil and greatly restricting the administration’s power to repatriate them, particularly to countries, such as Yemen, suffering significant internal instability.

The Obama administration itself imposed a freeze on all transfers to Yemen after the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner in December 2009 by a Nigerian national who had allegedly been trained in Yemen.

While the administration had succeeded in repatriating or resettling about 80 detainees in its first two years in office, progress ground to a halt by 2011.

Earlier this year, the State Department shut down the office of the special envoy in charge of repatriating cleared prisoners, one of a series of steps – including Obama’s failure to mention Guantanamo in his most recent inaugural and State of the Union addresses and the failure to initiate promised annual reviews of detainees who had not been cleared for repatriation — that contributed to the deepening despair and desperation of the remaining detainees, according to both their lawyers and Pentagon officials.

The detainees “had great optimism that Guantanamo would be closed. They were devastated …when the president backed off,” Gen. John Kelley, the head of the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), which has jurisdiction over the facility, told Congress
last week, before the spreading hunger strike drew national attention.

In addition to the 86 detainees who have been cleared for release, nine, including the operational “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, have either been convicted or are being tried before military commissions that have been attacked by civil and human rights groups as lacking due process.

Another 46 detainees have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be tried either because the evidence against them would be inadmissible in court (due to its acquisition by torture or other illegal methods) or whose alleged acts did not amount to a crime under U.S. law. They were designated for indefinite detention during Obama’s first term.

In his remarks Tuesday, Obama appeared to distance himself from indefinite detention, which has been denounced by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights as a violation of international human rights law.

“The notion that we’re going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity, even at a time when we’ve wound down the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, we’re having success defeating Al-Qaeda core … — the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop,” he said.

“President Obama’s call to end indefinite detention at Guantanamo is encouraging after his long silence on the issue,” said Laura Pitter, counter-terrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch (HRW), although she also noted that he was unclear whether his critique extended to detainees deemed to dangerous to release.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of Military Police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during in-processing to the temporary detention facility on Jan. 11, 2002. Credit: Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy/public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Apr 17 2013 (IPS)

Public debate here over the military prison at Guantanamo Bay heated up again following Monday’s surprise publication of a highly charged article by an inmate at the prison, one of dozens currently engaged in a months-long hunger strike over detainees’ “indefinite detention”.

The op-ed follows just days after the head U.N. official in charge of human rights, Navi Pillay, said the indefinite detention of Guantanamo Bay inmates runs counter to international law, and called again for the prison to be closed."The majority of people who are at Guantanamo right now have been cleared for release, and they have been cleared for up to six years." -- CCR's Susan Hu

“I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity,” Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni national who has been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for the past 11 years, wrote in the New York Times.

“I do not want to die here, but until President [Barack] Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.”

Moqbel is one of 43 prisoners at the U.S. military camp who are currently on a hunger strike.

His essay, which has received widespread attention, is not being interpreted as a plea of his innocence. Rather, many are seeing it as a testimony of the hopeless despair caused by the indefinite detention of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The essay also adds to pressure on President Obama to close Guantanamo, a pledge he made during the first year of his presidency, in 2009. Obama is facing widespread criticism now that the Guantanamo Bay prison has surpassed the two wars his presidency inherited.

“President Obama ran on a platform that he would close down Guantanamo and bring the United States back in compliance with international human rights law – but none of this happened,” Susan Hu, a legal fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and advocacy group representing some of the Guantanamo detainees, told IPS.

“In fact, he signed an executive order in 2009 promising that he would close the prison, and he has done absolutely nothing since then to do so. Even though he has the power to transfer people out of Guantanamo right now, he hasn’t done that in the past two years and transfers have all but ceased. The men see Guantanamo as the place they will be living until they die.”

Hu says her clients have consistently said they are falling into despair, reaching a point that refusing to eat is the only way they can express their loss of hope.

She also is clear that the onus is on President Obama to act.

“I think there is widespread misconception that Congress is the obstacle to releasing the prisoners in Guantanamo, when in fact President Obama needs to be taken to task for not using his power,” Hu continues.

“The majority of people who are at Guantanamo right now have been cleared for release, and they have been cleared for up to six years. I think the only reason these men have not been released is because President Obama is not willing to risk his political capital to move toward closing Guantanamo.”

Back to Bush

Despite keeping related criticism relatively contained during his first four-year term, the situation has taken a dramatic turn following the president’s signing, in January, of a defence bill that critics claim all but abandons the pledge to close the facility.

That legislation, the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA), barred the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States for any purpose, including for trial in federal court. It also required the defence secretary to meet rigorous conditions before any detainee could be returned to his own country or resettled in a third country.

“That bill requires certification from every agency that has a stake in the matter in order for a prisoner that was cleared for release to be transferred back to their home country or transferred out,” Hu told IPS.

“The bill also was used to prevent federal funding to be used to transfer prisoners into the United States – effectively barring them from federal courts. Obviously this makes it more difficult for Obama to transfer prisoners out of Guantanamo, and this has helped create the feeling of frustration among the prisoners that they will ever be transferred out.”

Previously, the U.S. government had been able to simply transfer a detainee who had pled guilty during military prosecution and served his time. But the NDAA provision effectively removed the ability to reach plea agreements or to push through promises already made to release inmates.

Yet Hu says it remains possible to transfer prisoners back to their home countries and close down the prison as Obama still has the authority to do so – despite having failed to exercise that power over the past two years.

“He is putting all the blame on Congress, when in fact he still possess the power to follow through with the his promise to close the prison,” Hu says.

“He closed the office in the State Department that was responsible for resettling the detainees, and he has not filled the White House position that is meant to oversee the closure of Guantanamo. These are all things that he could be doing right now, despite the restrictions created by the bill.”

Meanwhile, signs of the growing frustration on the part of detainees have manifested in a wave of hunger strikes in recent months, leading Guantanamo officials to engage in mass forced feedings. That process reached a new height last month when tensions escalated to become violent between detainees and prison guards.

“From what we’ve heard from our own clients there, the majority of the men in Camp 5 and Camp 6 are on hunger strike,” Hu told IPS.

“When the strike first began in Camp 6, it was all but two of the men, so that was 120 people, though now we are hearing it’s 43. We hear the guards are trying to retaliate against the prisoners on hunger strike by placing them in solitary confinement, like the conditions they were held in back in 2005.”

Guards are also reportedly moving prisoners out of communal areas and placing them en masse in solitary confinement.

“Its worrying to see that the conditions have worsened in such a way that it sort of like going back to the worse years under President [George W.] Bush, when prisoners were being abused and mistreated,” Hu says. “Today we are seeing this all over again.”

A typical cellblock at Guantanamo's Camp Delta. Credit: public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Mar 13 2013 (IPS)

In an unusual public testimony, the U.S. government has publicly stated that no “indefinite detention” is taking place among detainees at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay.

“The United States only detains individuals when that detention is lawful and does not intend to hold any individual longer than is necessary,” Michael Williams, a senior legal advisor for the State Department, told a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The testimony took place Tuesday as a panel of human rights lawyers appealed before an international human rights body over what they called an “unfolding humanitarian crisis” at the military prison, calling for an end to ongoing human rights violations they say are being committed against the detainees.

The hearing, at the Organisation of American States headquarters here in Washington, marked the first time since President Barack Obama’s re-election that the U.S. government has had to publicly answer questions concerning Guantánamo Bay. Legal representatives for the detainees also presented disturbing eyewitness accounts of prisoner despair at the facility, brought on by prolonged indefinite detention and harsh conditions that has led to a sustained hunger strike involving more than 100 prisoners at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Established in 2002, the Guantánamo Bay military prison held, at its height, more than 700 suspects of terrorism. The facility currently holds 166 prisoners, of whom 90 – most of them Yemenis – have reportedly been cleared for repatriation, while another 36 are due to be prosecuted in federal courts, although those trials have yet to take place.

The remaining are being held indefinitely without trial because evidence of their past ties to terrorist groups is unlikely to be admissible in court. In some cases, this is reportedly due to its acquisition by torture, while in other cases because the U.S. government believes that the suspects would return to extremist activities if they were to be released.

The IACHR has repeatedly called for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, and has requested permission to meet with the men detained there. The U.S. government has failed to allow the hemispheric rights body permission to make such a visit, however.

The IACHR held Tuesday’s hearing to learn more about the unfolding humanitarian crisis at the Guantánamo prison. It also focused on new components to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed earlier this year, which has been criticised for authorising indefinite detention and restricts the transfer of Guantánamo detainees.

Tuesday’s hearing saw testimony from experts in law, health and international policy, covering the psychological impact of indefinite detention, deaths of some suspects at Guantánamo, the lack of access to fair trials, and U.S. policies that have restricted the prison’s closure.

On taking office four years ago, President Obama famously promised to close the prison and ordered an end to certain interrogation tactics that rights groups called “torture”, including “extraordinary rendition” to third countries known to use torture. Yet he has since relied to a much greater extent on drone strikes against “high value” suspected terrorists from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, while failing to close the prison.

“In the 2008 campaign, both [presidential candidate John] McCain and Obama were squarely opposed to Guantánamo and agreed that this ugly hangover from the Bush/Cheney era had to be abandoned,” Omar Farah, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), told IPS. “But four years later, the political whims have completely reversed and there is almost unanimity that Guantánamo needs to remain open aside from occasional platitudes from the president.”

Yet Farah is clear in his view that reversing this trend is still well within President Obama’s power.

“This is something that really calls for leadership from the president – he needs to decide if he wants Guantánamo to be part of his legacy,” Farah says.

“If the U.S. isn’t willing to charge someone in a fair process and can’t produce proper evidence of their crimes, then those prisoners have to be released. There is just no other way to have a democratic system. We’ve never had this kind of an alternative system of justice, and yet that’s what we have in Guantánamo.”

Pervasive health crisis

Human rights activists claim the Obama administration has not only broken his promise to rapidly close Guantánamo, but that his administration has also extended some of the worst aspects of the system. They point to the administration’s continuance of indefinite detention without charge or trial, employing illegitimate military commissions to try some suspects, and blocking accountability for torture.

At Tuesday’s hearings, the State Department’s Williams made extensive note of the health facilities and services that the U.S. government has made available for the detainees. And while critics do admit that the government facilities do meet international standards for detainees’ physical needs, they note that the mere fact of indefinite detention inflicts a toll all its own.

“The hopelessness and despair caused by indefinite detention is causing an extremely pressing and pervasive health crisis at Guantánamo,” Kristine Huskey, a lawyer with Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“A person held in indefinite detention is a person deprived of information about their own fate. They are in custody without knowing when, if ever, they will be released. Additionally, they do not know if they will be charged with crimes, receive a trial, or ever see their families again. If they have been abused or mistreated, they also do not know if this will happen again.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, however, Williams refused even to admit that indefinite detention was taking place at Guantánamo. CCR’s Farah called the whole experience “very disheartening”.

“It was shocking – they explicitly denied that there is indefinite detention, despite the fact that most of the prisoners there have been there for more than a decade without charge or trial,” Farah said. “So we are looking for the IACHR to remain actively engaged and hope that they will continue to put pressure on the U.S. government to comply with their international legal obligations toward these prisoners.”

Farah says the CCR wants to see Guantánamo closed and all prisoners Washington does not intend to charge with crimes to be allowed to return home or be sent to a safe country. “That’s just a base level international legal requirement,” he said.

Guantanamo captives in January 2002. Credit: US Navy/public domain

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 4 2013 (IPS)

Human rights groups are denouncing President Barack Obama’s failure to veto a defence bill that will make it far more difficult for him to fulfill his four-year-old pledge to close the Guantanamo detention facility this year.

Obama had threatened to veto the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) precisely because it renewed, among other things, Congressional restrictions which he said were intended to “foreclose” his ability to shut down the notorious prison, which has been used for the past 11 years to detain suspected foreign terrorists.

But, for the second year in a row, he failed to follow through on his threat and instead signed the underlying bill, which was passed by both houses of Congress last month and authorises the Pentagon to spend 633 billion dollars on its operations in 2013.

“President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before Inauguration Day,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “He has jeopardised his ability to close Guantanamo during his presidency.

“Scores of men who have already been held for nearly 11 years without being charged with a crime – including more than 80 who have been cleared for transfer – may very well be imprisoned unfairly for another year,” Romero added.

“The administration blames Congress for making it harder to close Guantanamo, yet for a second year, President Obama has signed damaging congressional restrictions into law,” noted Andrea Prasow, senior counter-terrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “The burden is on Obama to show he is serious about closing the prison.”

Obama’s signing of the law comes amid a growing debate – both within and outside the administration – about when and how to end the so-called “Global War on Terror” – especially its most controversial components – that Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, initiated shortly after the Al-Qaeda attacks on Manhattan’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon on Sep. 11, 2001.

Last month, the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, addressed precisely that topic in a speech to Britain’s Oxford Union, asking, “Now that the efforts by the U.S. military against Al-Qaeda are in their 12th year, we must also ask ourselves, how will this conflict end?”

While he didn’t offer any specific answers, he indicated that a “tipping point” could be reached when Washington concluded that the group and its affiliates were rendered incapable of launching “strategic attacks” against the U.S.

On taking office four years ago, Obama ordered an end to certain tactics, notably what the Bush administration referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques” that rights groups called “torture”, and “extraordinary rendition” to third countries known to use torture. He has since relied to a much greater extent on drone strikes against “high-value” suspected terrorists from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia.

Some former Bush officials have raised the question whether Obama’s use of targeted killings – which Bush also used but not nearly as frequently – was morally or legally more justifiable than their use of “enhanced interrogation”. Some have even suggested that the administration has preferred killing suspects to capturing them, especially if their capture would require it to send more prisoners to Guantanamo, something Obama pledged not to do.

The administration has sought to justify that tactic – which a growing number of critics consider counter-productive at best, and illegal under international law if carried out far from the battlefield – in general terms but has shied away from spelling out the specific circumstances under which it is deployed.

Drone strikes are believed to have killed more than 1,500 people in Pakistan and more than 400 in Yemen since Obama took office, according to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which claims that a not-insignificant proportion of the deaths have included civilians.

The administration is reportedly working to tighten rules regarding the use of drone strikes, particularly by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has enjoyed greater freedom in deciding when to attack suspects in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia than the U.S. military has had in Afghanistan.

Particularly controversial was the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen and alleged Al-Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen in 2011.

A federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that she could not require the Justice Department to disclose an internal memorandum that provided the legal justification for that attack, but noted that such actions appeared on their face” to be “incompatible with our Constitution and laws”.

The ACLU, which brought the lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, denounced the ruling, insisting that “the public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including U.S. citizens, who are from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”

On the very first day of his presidency four years ago, Obama issued an executive order directing the closing of Guantanamo Bay, which he called a “sad chapter in American history”, within one year.

At the time, he ordered a review of the cases of the approximately 250 detainees who were still there – down from a high of around 800 shortly after it opened in January 2002 – to determine whether they could be prosecuted in civilian courts on U.S. soil or released.

In 2010, an administration task force recommended repatriating 126 detainees to their homelands or a third country, prosecuting 36 others in federal court or before military commissions (which have nonetheless been harshly criticised by human-rights groups for lack of due-process guarantees), and holding 48 others indefinitely pending the end of hostilities.

Some were indeed repatriated; 166 detainees remain at Guantanamo today.

But the administration’s plan encountered heavy resistance in Congress, particularly from lawmakers who strongly opposed the transfer of any suspected terrorists to detention facilities or prisons in their jurisdictions or their trial before civilian courts.

By 2011, Congress attached amendments to critical defence bills restricting Obama’s ability to repatriate detainees and banning their transfer to the U.S. mainland for any purpose, despite the fact that the yearly cost of holding a prisoner in a maximum-security U.S.-based facility would be a fraction of the estimated 800,000 dollars it costs to hold a detainee at Guantanamo.

Obama has taken the position that these restrictions encroach on his powers as commander-in-chief, but his signing of this most recent NDAA marks the second time that he has backed down from a veto threat.

“It’s not encouraging that the president continues to be willing to tie his own hands when it comes to closing Guantanamo,” said Dixon Osborn of Human Rights First. ”The injustice of Guantanamo continues to serve as a stain on American global leadership on human rights.”

The NDAA also imposes curbs on the administration’s ability to transfer or repatriate some 50 non-Afghan citizens who are currently being held by U.S. forces in Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Plenty of monikers have been attached to Omar Khadr, one of the most famous Guantanamo Bay detainees – child soldier, terrorist, war criminal, Al-Qaeda family member, security threat.

This image is taken from a video secretly recorded when 16-year-old captive Omar Khadr was interrogated by Canadian officials in Guantanamo. Credit: Public domain

One thing is certain: Khadr’s release last weekend to Canadian custody after 10 years has proven highly provocative. His return to Canadian soil has triggered passionate debate about how he should be regarded and whether a man born into a radical family championing terrorism can reintegrate into a society he barely knows.

The tendency to characterise Khadr as a convicted war criminal, given that his confession was made under duress, indicates there are “so many factors related to this particular case that are not being challenged enough” and that the context of children’s use in armed conflict must be reexamined, said Dr. Shelly Whitman, the director of Dalhousie University’s Child Soldiers Initiative in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Now 26, Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was a 15-year-old when captured during a 2002 firefight with U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. He threw a grenade, killing Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, for which he pleaded guilty to murder, although his supporters argue evidence points to a death resulting from friendly fire.

Khadr, whose sentence began in 2010 and will end in 2018, also admitted to providing material support for terrorism, attempted murder, conspiracy and spying, according to a statement issued by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews over the weekend. The minister added that Khadr, raised in Canada, Pakistan and Afghanistan, was an Al-Qaeda supporter whose accomplices included Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri.

While Khadr’s life thus far has been a whirlwind of activity, the challenges will not end once he is a free man. Whitman told IPS that he will face hurdles to find employment, struggles to catch up with education and “deep problems” from a psychosocial perspective because he experienced torture. However, she cast doubt on the negative influences of his family.

“As far as I’m concerned, this notion that because they have an association and they’ve said some things which are viewed as radical to others in this country, it doesn’t mean necessarily that he’s going to want to commit anything (that forces him) to go back to prison… Why would he do anything to jeopardise going back to that context?”

A poll conducted last month suggested the aversion of many Canadians to Khadr’s return, a problem some say is rooted in the tendency of his portrayal as a child soldier or as a terrorist.

Under the Paris Principles of 2007, guidelines to protect children from recruitment and to assist those already involved with armed groups, “the things that define a child soldier are the very things that would define a child terrorist,” Whitman said. As it stands, there are perception problems in Canada about the definition of a child soldier, a worldwide phenomenon involving boys and girls assigned a variety of roles depending on the particular conflict, she said.

Gail Davidson, executive director of Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada in Vancouver, disagrees with both the terrorist and child soldier claims.

The United States has not presented any evidence to any court that Khadr threw the grenade killing the U.S. soldier, she told IPS, adding that it would have been classified as “murder according to the laws of war” had he, as an armed combatant, killed an opponent.

“As far as Mr. Khadr being a child soldier, we don’t know whether he was a child soldier or not,” Davidson argued. “We don’t know of any instance of him ever bearing arms or otherwise engaging in warfare.”

The October 2010 plea agreement by which the U.S. government agreed to limit his additional imprisonment to eight years if he pleaded guilty to all the U.S. offences “should be properly viewed as a confession obtained through the use of torture and not as a reliable and legitimate determinant of guilt or innocence”, she said.

During his detention, Khadr complained of being forced into painful stress positions, threatened with rape and rendition to third-party countries, hooded, and confronted with barking dogs, some of which was confirmed by U.S. government witnesses, according to a Sep. 29 press release issued by Human Rights Watch. The organisation added he was denied legal counsel until 2004.

For the most part, Khadr has received positive assessments by psychiatric experts.

Last year, psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis reported no “indication of aggressive or dangerous behavior” after 300 hours of interaction with Khadr, who has “consistently emphasized his goal to establish a constructive and peaceful life as a Canadian citizen”, according to a letter written to Minister Toews.

In several conversations, Khadr “repudiated” the beliefs of terrorist groups and demonstrated a “capacity to engage with others in a healthy way”, added Katherine Porterfield, a clinical psychologist for the defence team, in a letter to the minister in 2011.

Still, there are detractors, among them psychiatrist Michael Welner. Welner worked with Khadr for 500 to 600 hours and described him as dangerous. Citing the Canadian’s demonstrated capacity to kill, Al-Qaeda affiliations and “hardened” family members conveying “belligerence towards the United States”, Werner testified that he feared the young man’s history and associates will all “contribute mightily” to bolstering Al-Qaeda’s North American presence.

Khadr advocates are concerned that Welner’s testimony heavily influenced the Canadian government. Upon Khadr’s release to Canadian authorities, the public safety minister expressed anxiety about the 26-year-old’s romanticisation of his father’s activities (which he viewed as NGO-related) and many of the issues raised by the psychiatrist. Ottawa pledged to offer appropriate programming during Khadr’s imprisonment and strict conditions if he is granted parole as early as next year.

Other reintegration proposals are based on keeping Khadr away from the negative influences of his family, but it was never clear which feasible assurances could be offered since media reports indicate his family wishes to see him, David Harris, the director of the international and terrorist intelligence programme at INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc. in Ottawa and a former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told IPS.

Overall, the saga of Omar Khadr has been impacted by “possible simple-mindedness” surrounding the question of his child-soldier status, as some have insisted on the label without fully examining the specific merits and implications of the evidence, Harris said. Certain individuals have regarded as “wholly irrelevant” the issue of criminal responsibility, he added.

These “sentimental” views neglect to a large extent the public safety implications of cases like Khadr’s and understate the “burgeoning terror issue that I fear will become an extremely prominent feature of Canadian life”, Harris said.