A new facility at Guantánamo Bay, known as Camp 5, Camp 6 and Camp Echo, has "created even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation" for around 300 detainees. In other words, cruel and inhuman treatment. And just in case you forgot,
As a party to the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the United States has accepted a legal obligation not to engage in torture or other forms of mistreatment.
A new Amnesty International report states that the majority of prisoners in this facility are being held in solitary confinement. Prisoners are restricted to their cells for 22 hours a day, only exercising at night, and can go for days without seeing daylight.
According to Amnesty’s UK director, Kate Allen, "[w]ith many prisoners already in despair at being held in indefinite detention... some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown."
Detention without trial and the military tribunal system have been justified as necessary in the face of the unique threat that international Islamic terrorism poses. Even if we accept that terrorism is our disease, then this is a delusional cure -- like the practice of bleeding in the seventeenth century, one that is more likely to kill the patient. It makes the concept of justice meaningless; and justice, in contrast to terrorism, is all about the value that we place on our own humanity.
That’s bad enough.
But what stumps me completely is the Guantánamo doctrine that not only is it acceptable to remove someone’s freedom without private or public justification, but that it is also acceptable to inflict physical or psychological torture.
It doesn’t require a degree –- except perhaps a degree in stating the bloody obvious -- to understand how damaging this is to our self-respect.
Amnesty call once more for Guantánamo to be closed down. I don’t. They can keep it open forever if they like, that’s fine with me. As long as they stop inflicting physical and psychological torture and as long as every detainee is either charged in a court of law, or released.
According to the BBC, the US has said it plans to use the military tribunal system to prosecute about 80 of 385 prisoners remaining at the camp. About 300 – presumably the remaining 300 - are being detained in this new facility, and will apparently never even get this cheap fantasy of justice. Whether justice for these men should mean release or punishment, no one will ever know.
- I wonder when Hollywood is going to make a movie about this story.
Please also see this diary from mobiusein: http://www.dailykos.com/...