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Home Our meetings are open to all
3rd Wednesday of each month Note: Usually we meet in Brunswick, but ocassionally at other locations around the state, so contact us just to be sure.Contact us: (207)
743-2183 mail (at) letcubalive.org Let Cuba Live
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Guantanamo - Lessons for all by Tom Whitney As of 2011, The United States had occupied 45 square miles around Cuba's Guantanamo Bay for 100 years. As of January 11, 2012, U.S. prisoners from wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere had been at Guantanamo for 10 years. The United States is wrong on Guantanamo on two counts. Occupation violates international law, and Guantanamo prisoners have been tortured and abused. Efforts taken to correct both wrongs have diverged. despite a common context of imperialist privilege. As a result, opposition forces have aimed low, satisfied as they are with limited goals and turning a blind eye to parallel abuses. Logic and strategic effectiveness would, it seems, call for unified struggle against the imperialist offender. In accepting the U.S.- concocted Platt Amendment as part of its new constitution, post-colonial Cuba in 1901 authorized future intrusions of U.S. troops in Cuba and, under the Platt Amenedment Article Seven,Cuba opened up Guantanamo Bay for use as a U.S. coaling station and naval base. The assumption prevailed even then that such occupation served the end of U. S. control over the island. The United States had intervened during the last months of Cuba's second war for independence. Cuban rebels had already defeated Spain's colonial army. U.S. take-over of the peace process led to 60 years of political and economic vassalage for Cuba. The nascent U.S. empire was simultaneously absorbing Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. International lawyer and former UN official Alfred de Zayas details why the U.S. hold on Guantanamo Bay violates standards of international law. He cites the doctrine known as "Material Breach of the Agreement," which applies to U. S. establishement of a prison there; the "Doctrine of Unequal Treaties," which implies forced agreement; and the "Emergence of New Peremptory Norms," which references post-colonial realities like self-determination. De Zayas includes also the idea of a "Fundamental Change of Circumstances," which reflects changed world conditions or changed relations between treaty partners, plus the notion of an "Implied Right of Denunciation," which invokes Cuban sovereignty to condemn the 1934 agreement on renewing the Guantanamo lease.It was established there that both countries had to approve any U. S. departure from Guantanamo. And under the U.S. Helms Burton Law of 1996, the United States would not be leaving as long as Raul or Fidel Castro served Cuban governments. U.S prison facilities came into full use at Guantanamo in the 1990's when the United States temporarily housed tens of thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees there. Prisoner abuse began then and mushroomed afterwards with the arrival of Afghanistan war detainees. For almost ten years stories have circulated on the Internet of incarceration of children, old men, innocent bystanders, and non-terrorist defenders of their homelands. Many were "sold" to the U.S. military by bounty hunters, many had been transferred from other prison hell-holes, and most were tortured. Some qualified for release, but have been spurned by their countries of origen. Andy Worthington's blog surveys individual stories. Released in December, 2011, an exhaustive Amnesty International (AI) report titled "Guantanamo, a Decade of Damage to Human Rights" also mines individual accounts of torture and abuse. The 60 page report includes revealing statements and comments from judges, chiefs of state, U.S. politicians, military officials, and jailers. Contradictory turns of U.S. policies and judicial decisions are fully explored. The AI survey covers worldwide U.S. human rights abuses, use of policy considerations rather than law to determine prisoners' fates, and detentions continuing despite court-ordered release. It condemns manipulation of judicial proceedings, lack of victim remedies, and absent U.S. accountability for "crimes under international law". In all, 774 prisoners had entered Guantanamo by the end of 2011; 171 men remain, of whom 120 arrived before September 2002 and 12 on January 11, 2002. Only one of the latter has been charged. Fragmentation of priorities and action among those opposed to U. S. actions relating to Guantanamo is readily apparent. For Cuban solidarity activists, for example, U. S. occupation of Guantanamo Bay has seemingly receded into the background, together with the Cuban Adjustment Act and even U.S. blockade provisions denying Cubans essential medical supplies and food. Understandably, focus has been on freedom for the anti -terrorist Cuban Five prisoners, on impunity for terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and on ending travel restrictions. However, to downplay the multifaceted nature of Cuban solidarity work leads, we suggest, to skirting the root cause of U. S. anti - Cuban hostilities. Achievement of limited, single issue gains, while welcome and sought-after, ought not obscure the anti-imperialist essence of the contest. They are only steps along the way. And in that spirit, partisans of decent U.S. - Cuban relations would do well to join human rights and peace activists presently campaigning to empty the Guantanamo prison. And the latter, by the same anti-imperialist token, ought to work for Guantanamo's return to Cuba. To take on the empire requires, to say the least, a unified resistance movement .
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