Guantanamo Bay
From RationalWiki
Guantanamo Bay is a US Naval base on the island of Cuba. Now more than a century old, it is the only US base in a country which America does not have good diplomatic relations and which the hosting country opposes the existence of. The base owes its existence to the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which gave the US Navy control over it (for some reason when the US invaded they decided to go all the way around the island, rather than cross from Miami). When Fidel Castro took over, he declared the Treaty of Paris null and void, but supposedly accepted the first rent check from the US. The US considers this proof enough that the Cuban government is still bound by the Treaty. It is now most famous for containing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, or "Gitmo", a military prison created in 2002 in as a place to hold alleged terrorists.
It holds prisoners which the United States government feels pose a terrorist threat. In order to avoid the strictures of the Geneva Conventions the US government has classified the prisoners as "enemy combatants" and not as "prisoners of war". Although none of the major human rights advocacy groups (such as the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International) have described it as such, some people believe that the Guantanamo Bay facility constitutes a concentration camp.
The detention center has been a source of continual disgrace to the United States, and would be an embarrassment to the George W. Bush administration, if they were capable of feeling shame.
Michael Moore pointed out in his documentary Sicko that Guantanamo Bay offers free health care to its detainees, as the United States is a "Contracting Party to the World Health Organization, and thus has accepted the principle that the 'enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being.'"[1] Ironically, the United States has not extended the "fundamental right" of free health care to its own citizens.
[edit] Currently
Almost immediately after taking office, President Obama ordered the closure of the prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, pending a six-month review of the details, and temporarily suspended all military tribunals in process there[2].
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Report on the Situation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Section V. http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2006/guantanamo-detainees-report_un_060216.htm
- ↑ "Obama Orders Secret Prisons and Detention Camps Closed". New York Times. January 22, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/politics/23GITMOCND.html?_r=2&hp.
