CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

GUANTANAMO BASE: US LEGAL BLACKHOLE

By Carlos A. Amores, Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to Malaysia.

In 1902, as a precondition to give Cuba its independence and withdraw their troops from the island, the United States imposed the concession of the Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, 920 km east of Havana, 64 km east of Santiago de Cuba, covering 117,6 sq. Km of the eastern part of one of Cuba’s largest natural bays which environment has been seriously damaged by the 104 year old military presence since they took possession in December 1903. The North American troops´ exercises have caused ecological damages to the surroundings; they have even used nuclear submarines.

The Cuban Constitution of 1902 had an embedded text of a document, a US legislation, known in History as the Platt Amendment (the name of the US Senator who wrote it) that had been passed in the US Congress and signed by President McKIinley, which provided the right of the US to intervene in Cuba whenever they felt the “independence of Cuba” was threatened, and obliged the new-born republic to a series of concessions.

As a consequence in 1903 the Cuban government had to signed the agreement giving birth to Guantanamo Base, which stipulated that the time for the “leasing” agreement will be perpetual, and that could only be terminated by the two parties agreement.

The US Treasury Department, for its yearly leasing, issues every year a check for 4085 USD (35 cents per Hectare), never cleared by the Cuban Government in a show of dignity and disagreement for their illegal occupation of part of Cuba’s territory.

Before the Cuban Revolution the base promoted prostitution, drugs and gambling amongst the local population. After 1959, they fired the 3000 member Cuban staff -today only 10 Cubans work there- and started a series of provocations that cost lives both of military and civilian Cubans.

In many opportunities, the Cuban authorities have declared they will not accept any other negotiation concerning this territory illegally occupied unless the unconditional withdrawal of the foreign troops quartered there against Cuba's people will. With equal seriousness, the Cuban government has ratified they will not try to recover its legitimate rights by force and will patiently wait until justice prevails.

In the last 20 years, with the fast development of high-tech military technology and weapons, the imperial police role of the base in the Caribbean has vanished, losing its military relevance. Nevertheless, they have remained there to humiliate the Cuban People.

But the Bush regime has found a new role for the ailing facility. It has become a concentration camp for Muslims. Similar to Abu Ghraib and probably the other secret prisons they have we do not know where, outside their territory, the detainees in Guantánamo are not considered POWs, are not under US or any other country’s jurisdiction, so once they entered there, they disappeared as human beings entitled to respect for their rights. Law is sucked off in Guantánamo, as well as matter in space black-holes.

On January 19, 2005, reflecting the indignation of our people at the atrocities committed on prisoners held at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented the US governmental authorities in Havana and Washington with a diplomatic note denouncing the flagrant violations of human rights that the said government is daily committing on Cuban territory illegally occupied by the above-mentioned naval base. This communication called for an immediate end to that inhuman and criminal conduct.

The note reminded the US government that the atrocities being committed on the base and the very fact of utilizing that illegally occupied Cuban territory as a prison, is in violation of numerous instruments of international law and international humanitarian law, and moreover, violates the Coal and Naval Stations Agreement signed in February 1903 by the government of the United States and the Cuban government of that period, in conditions of inequality and disadvantage for our country, whose independence was circumscribed via the Platt Agreement.

According to Article II of that agreement, the US government committed itself to doing everything necessary to ensure that those locations should be exclusively used as coal or naval stations and for no other objective.

It is also important to recall that when the Cuban authorities were informed - although not consulted - of the US government decision to transfer a group of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan to this US military enclave in Guantánamo, the government of the Republic of Cuba informed national and internal opinion in a statement dated January 11, 2002, that "although the transfer of foreign prisoners of war on the part of the government of the United States to one of its military installations located on part of our national territory over which we have been deprived of the right to exercise jurisdiction is not in line with the regulations that gave rise to that installation, we shall not create any obstacles to the development of the operation." Moreover, the statement highlighted that our government had "taken note with satisfaction of public statements from the US authorities in the context of the prisoners receiving adequate and humane treatment."

The dramatic reality of the prisoners detained on the Guantánamo Naval Base, reported by the media to amount more than 300 at the present time, likewise reveals the double standards of the US government in its hackneyed and manipulative campaigning on behalf of human rights.

The arbitrary detention of these foreign prisoners without the mediation of a legal trial, as well as the torture and degrading treatment to which they are being subjected, constitute a gross violation of human rights and numerous international treaties and conventions, in particular, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

With this hypocritical conduct, the government of the United States has demonstrated the falsity of its own public statements and once again has lied to the government of the Republic of Cuba, to its own people and to the international community by concealing the horrific acts of torture, cruelty and humiliating and denigratory treatment committed on prisoners detained on the Guantánamo Naval Base, only comparable with the torture inflicted on inmates in the prison of Abu Ghraib and other penitential establishments in occupied Iraqi territory.

Cuba adds its voice to the calls and demands of the international community that the government of the United States instantly end these flagrant violations of prisoners that, moreover, are being committed on illegally occupied Cuban territory.

The photographs of dantesque scenes of torture and humiliation to those detainees are all well known. The Bush regime has shown a complete disregard for Human Rights and International Law. And with supreme hypocrisy, they play the judge then to trial Third World countries regarding their Human Rights record.

(Cubaminrex-Embacuba Malasia)

 

 

<< Back