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A monument to injustice

There was never a chance that the United States would close down its infamous detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. The detention centre at the U.S. naval base is an affront to contemporary civilisation and to all notions of justice. Its existence menaces the liberties of people ruled by governments that are willing to toe Washington's line. Citizens of nearly 45 countries have been labelled `terrorists' or `enemy combatants' by the U.S. and whisked way to Guantanamo as their governments watched and, in several cases, actively assisted this lawless abduction. With the prison located, through an occupier's writ, on the island of Cuba, most constitutional protections are not available to inmates or their families. The detenus are at the mercy of military tribunals that do not need to apply the evidentiary standards followed by regular U.S. courts. Many of them have been held for extended periods, usually without being charged. The inmates of Guantanamo jail have little access to courts or legal counsel and virtually no communication with their families. They are, at times, physically tortured or made to suffer degrading punishment. That dozens have been released after months, if not years, in illegal detention provides ample indication that many innocents have been incarcerated. Mercifully, no one has been executed in Guantanamo so far, but legislation adopted by the U.S. Congress in September 2006 grants the military commissions the power to impose the death penalty.

The establishment of this purgatory for foreign nationals is consistent with the Bush administration's awful record of undermining the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. However, the key difference is that the American people can fight back as they did by giving control of Congress to the Democratic Party in the November 2006 election. People in countries ruled by weak, spineless, or collaborating governments have no such protection. The international community has allowed Washington to get away with whatever it chooses to do as it wages its war against terror. Terrorists continue to threaten the lives and liberties of those who do not subscribe to their fanatical world view. But the main achievement of the `global war on terror' spearheaded by an out-of-control superpower is death, mayhem, and suffering on a scale vastly greater than anything terrorism can inflict.

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