LeMonde: Guantanamo 'Shows Chasm between U.S. and World' [View All]

[unhappycamper]

Guantanamo 'Shows Chasm between U.S. and World'
EDITORIAL
Translated By Kate Brumback
June 13, 2006

The reaction of the commander of the camp at Guantanamo, at the discovery that three detainees had committed suicide, two Saudis and a Yemeni, shows the chasm which seperates the American authorities and the rest of the world on this disturbing issue. On June 10, Rear-Admiral Harry Harris said that the group suicide is "an act of asymmetric warfare against the United States." Another American official, Colleen Graffy, who is deputy secretary of state for public diplomacy, called act of the detainees, "a PR stunt" to attract attention.

Without falling into angelism in regard to the essential battle against global terrorism, how can the United States be made to hear reason in regard to this black mark which Guantanamo has become on the democratic world? When Admiral Harris evokes an act of war directed against America, he forgets that American blindness toward the treatment of suspected al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo or at secret CIA prisons, he exposes all Western democracies to propaganda and Islamist radicalization. It is in our suburbs and in our Muslim communities in Europe, where al-Qaeda recruiters and other fundamentalist proselytizers are coming to recruit, with arguments graciously offered by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Pentagon leadership.

It is not enough to say that the camp at Guantanamo, which opened in January 2002 and still holds 460 prisoners without having been tried, is juridical nonsense. It is not enough to say that it constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and human rights. It is not enough to write that it is unworthy of a country so universally admired for having built respect for the rule of law into a constitutional system. It was not enough to be astonished that the Bush Administration, through its obstinacy, is showing such contempt for its own Supreme Court, which in June 2004 demanded that the detainees at Guantanamo be permitted to defend themselves in American civilian courts - and its contempt for its own popularity which, after initial indifference, has seen an increasing number of voices denouncing conditions at the Guantanamo prison. It is not enough, either, to recall the Historical mistakes on this subject, from the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War through Margaret Thatcher's stubbornness toward IRA hunger strikers in 1981.

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