The tragic events of 11th September 2001 served as a pretext for the unleashing of a clearly neofascist strategy aimed at world domination, previously devised by the ideologists of the far-right and militarist factions that hold sway in the United States. The Bush administration has set in motion a wave of harshly repressive measures, restricting domestic civil and political liberties and, most importantly, threatening the right of various other countries to self-determination, development and peace.

In the name of an alleged war on terrorism, the government of the superpower has waged wars of imperialist conquest aimed at consolidating its global supremacy and seizing control of strategic resources. In the process, it has rode roughshod over the most basic rules of international humanitarian law and has seriously and persistently encroached on basic human rights, including those to life and freedom.

To the violation of the human rights of thousands of foreign nationals arbitrarily imprisoned in the United States, can be added the legal and existential limbo in which over 600 people, including children, have been kept, arbitrarily imprisoned in inhuman conditions at the Guantánamo Naval Base, which has illegally occupied Cuban territory for over 100 years —a permanent affront to the dignity and sovereign will of the Cuban people.

After the war in Afghanistan, the Government of the United States decided to house its prisoners in the "war on terrorism" in the Guantánamo base.

At the time, the Cuban government sent an official Note (dated 11th January 2002) agreeing not to impede this operation, while describing the situation as one of transferring foreign prisoners of war of the United States to a military installation on Cuban soil over which Cuba had been forcibly deprived of jurisdiction. The Note added that the Americans' decision was not consistent with the original rules associated with the setting up of the base.

The Cuban government had remained in favour of maintaining relations with the naval base reflecting the goodwill and mutual respect that had prevailed during recent years. In these circumstances, it reiterated that Cuba's differences with the United States over the issue of eradicating terrorism in the most effective way lay in the method rather than in the need to end this scourge, of which our people have been the victim for over 40 years. The Cuban government also expressed its outrage at the barbarous attacks suffered by the American people on 11th September 2001.

In the official Note, the Government of the Republic of Cuba expressed its satisfaction with the public announcements of the US authorities regarding proper and otherwise humane treatment of the prisoners at the base and offered its cooperation in the form of medical services, if these were needed.

However, the real situation at the base has been quite different. What has been conceived and introduced there is one of the worst regimes in modern times in terms of massive and flagrant violations of human rights, in which hundreds are being deprived of their very sense of humanity.

On this site, illegally occupied against the express wishes of the Cuban people, hundreds of foreign prisoners are arbitrarily detained, subjected to indescribable humiliations, totally isolated, with no means of communicating with their families or arranging for a proper defence. The charges against the majority of the detainees remain shrouded in mystery. Some of the handful that have been freed have recounted the horrors of this concentration camp, including torture as well as cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment.

Notions such as those of "illegal combatants" or the setting up of judicial aberrations such as the so-called "ad-hoc military tribunals", devised by the United States to justify the dehumanizing treatment meted out to its prisoners of war, fly in the face of international law and the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

These “courts” would be empowered to impose the death sentence and there would be no appeal. They would lack any vestige of independence and would infringe the rights of the defendants to choose a lawyer or otherwise arrange a proper defence. They would admit evidence potentially obtained under torture or duress.

The international community proclaims its condemnation of the situation at the Naval Base the United States maintains illegally on Cuban soil at Guantánamo, now converted into a facility for holding prisoners without trial or cause, without lawyers and without the least sign of due process —in the permanent climate of fear and hysteria among the US public created and maintained with alerts and arbitrary measures by the right-wing fundamentalists now in power.

The war on terrorism cannot be fought by means of terror, by denying rights or by the exercise of the so-called unilateral right to make war.

The International Red Cross Committee, leading jurists, academics, NGOs and UN agencies concerned with human rights, as well as the representatives of several national governments, have called on the US government to clarify the legal situation of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners without delay, in terms of international laws on human rights and of humanitarian international law.

The Government of the Republic of Cuba urges the US administration to purge this "moral and legal black hole" created at the illegally-occupied Guantánamo Naval Base. The Cuban people is gravely concerned for the fate of those arbitrarily detained in this part of its territory.

The Naval Base was part of the spoils of war following the US military intervention and occupation of the island, which deprived the Cuban people of the prospect of true independence.

The Guantánamo Naval base is a product of an illegal agreement on coaling and naval stations signed in 1903 between the US administration and the government Cuba was allowed to have by the neocolonial power, under conditions in which our people were unable to exercise their sovereignty. Such military facilities had been demanded by the United States in an appendix to the constitution imposed on Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of US troops: the notorious Platt Amendment.

The Agreement for Coaling and Naval stations provided the right “to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as Coaling and Naval stations only, and for no other purpose”.

Thirty one years later, on 29th May 1934, the United States and Cuba signed a new treaty on their mutual relations, supplanting that of 1903, under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour" policy.

Nonetheless, the new treaty involved the continued occupation of the Guantánamo base and ratified the terms of its "lease".

Throughout the neocolonial period, the base was used by the corrupt, brutal governors imposed by the US in disregard of the interests of the Cuban people. Indeed, during 1958, many of the Batista dictatorship's warplanes were fuelled and rearmed with bombs there, before continuing their bombardment of the civilian population in eastern Cuba.

Following revolutionary victory in 1959 —the year which, unlike the formal event on 20th May 1902, marked true independence for Cuba for the first time— the Guantánamo base became a permanent symbol of the threat, provocation and violation of the Republic's sovereignty at the heart of the policy, the United States pursued against Cuba with successive acts of aggression, sabotage and other crimes.

The Cuban government repeatedly denounced these provocations, addressing its protests not only to the US government but also to the UN, arguing that the US neocolonial enclave at Guantánamo had never been used in accordance with the spurious 1903 treaty based on the Platt Amendment or with the equally invalid 1934 treaty, respectively to defend Cuba or as symbol of friendship between the two nations.

In fact, throughout the last four decades and more, the base has been used for various purposes, none of which have been consistent with the agreement under which the United States justifies its presence in our territory.

The base became the cause of various disputes between Havana and the United States. The vast majority of the 3,000-plus Cuban citizens who worked there were sacked and replaced by nationals of other countries.

During the revolutionary conflict, there were frequent cases of shots fired from the base into free Cuban territory; Cuban soldiers were killed in consequence, while mercenaries hired by the foreign power found sanctuary and support at the facility. It was even used for planning a mock attack, conceived by the US government in the 1960s and known by the US special services as 'Operation Patty'. This ruse, which was thwarted by the Cuban security service, involved sending a force of US agents to fire on the base, giving the impression that it was being attacked by the Cuban armed forces and supplying the pretext for 'retaliatory' aggression.

Another time, also by US unilateral decision, tens of thousands of migrants

—Haitian and Cuban nationals who were trying independently and illegally to reach the United States— were concentrated at this military base.

In nearly half a century, there has never been a time when conditions would have enabled a calm, legal and diplomatic review of the situation, with the aim of reaching the only logical and just solution to this longstanding anomaly: the return to Cuba of this part of its territory occupied against the will of our people.

A basic principle of Cuban policy on this potentially dangerous, decades-old issue between Cuba and the United States —in view of the more relaxed atmosphere marked by mutual respect that has developed over recent years— has been to avoid making our claim a priority or even a question of special importance among the many serious differences between us.

Cuba has taken great care to adopt a particularly sensitive and conciliatory policy in this area.

The position of the Cuban government on the legal status of the US base at Guantánamo is that, being based on a lease, it is a temporary —not perpetual— occupation of part of our territory, and that justice for our people demands that in due course it must be peacefully returned to Cuba.

Apart from the question of the US's illegal occupation of Guantánamo —a situation that will be resolved when conditions permit— the Cuban people are now adding their voice to that of the international community in justly demanding an end to the present activities there. There must be no delay in eliminating this flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law. Neither must this serious precedent be allowed to continue.

This aberration and affront to justice and human dignity involves imprisonment without charge or trial for an indefinite period, incarceration in small cells for up to 24 hours a day, remaining handcuffed during the extremely short exercise period allowed, cruelty to the relatives caused by the uncertainty as to the fate of their loved ones, repeated interrogation without access to a lawyer and the possible prospect of execution after an unfair trial with no appeal.

Those classified as "illegal combatants" are held under arbitrary military regulations that permit the torture of prisoners and place them beyond the reach of habeas corpus and similar legal rights. They can be held without specific charge indefinitely, while their lawyers' work is impeded by various restrictions. They are not allowed to call certain witnesses. A defendant who asks for defending counsel other than the military defender assigned to him must first plead guilty, thereby blatantly denying the principle of the presumption of innocence.

But not all the detainees suffer the same treatment. A clear pattern of arbitrary selection and double standards has emerged. Citizens of nations within the "coalition of the willing" get a few guarantees from Mr Bush. These 'lucky ones' are allowed to talk to their lawyers in private, a privilege denied to the rest.

How is it that the superpower can sustain its thesis of alleged 'commitment' to the human rights of the Cuban people, while creating on the latter's territory a veritable human rights "black hole"?

Cuba reiterates its condemnation of the massive, flagrant and systematic violations of human rights being perpetrated on hundreds of people under arbitrary detention by the US administration within and outside its territory, and particularly at the Naval Base it maintains illegally at Guantánamo. The Cuban people supports and fully endorses the call by the international community for a clear and consistent statement on this serious situation.