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Guantanamo
and human rights: Practicing what we preach by Jim Rice
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![]() | Guantanamo Bay
has become not only a symbol of the U.S. government's hypocrisy and
dishonesty - or "disassembling," as President Bush might put it - around
the war on terror. The prison camp has become one of the more egregious
examples of the cost of unaccountable power.
Human rights groups have long documented the abuse of prisoners at
Guantanamo, including desecration of the Quran. (The International
Committee of the Red Cross issued credible reports in 2002 and 2003 on
mistreatment of the Islamic holy book, which last week even the Pentagon
admitted.)
The 540 prisoners at the facility have been held incommunicado, denied
access to legal counsel, and, in fact, denied the most basic aspects of
legal process. The Bush administration has given mutually contradictory
rationalizations for its treatment of prisoners there, claiming on the one
hand that those incarcerated are effectively prisoners of war and in other
circumstances that they are terrorist criminals. Yet the administration
has refused to honor either the Geneva Conventions for treatment of POWs
or the rights granted the accused under U.S. criminal law.
Defenders of Guantanamo and the policies it represents are quick to
point out that our treatment of prisoners is far better than that meted
out by the U.S.'s terrorist enemies - or the "gulag" of the former Soviet
Union, for that matter. Fair enough. But if the U.S. is to continue to
claim a place as a world leader for human rights, our standards must be
infinitely higher and conform to or surpass international norms. We must
not be satisfied with merely being "better" than al Qaeda or Stalin.
Former President Jimmy Carter has joined human rights groups, led by
Amnesty International and others, in calling for the closing of Guantanamo
Bay. "The U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to
our reputation...because of reports concerning abuses of prisoners in
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo," Carter said, according to an A.P.
report. President Bush refused to rule out the closing of the facility,
saying the administration was "exploring all alternatives" for detaining
the prisoners.
Guantanamo should be closed. But simply closing the facility - and
either moving the detainees to another location or returning them to their
country of origin - is not enough. If the United States is to regain any
credibility as an advocate of human rights around the world, it must begin
to practice what it preaches in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and
everywhere else. The erosion of respect for human rights by U.S. personnel
didn't begin at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, and the responsibility for
it goes all the way to the top.
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