hope and sadness
Jun. 16th, 2005 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonGuantanamo inmates can be held 'in perpetuity'- US
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican senators called on Wednesday for the rights of foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay prison to be legally defined even as the Bush administration said the inmates could be jailed there "in perpetuity."
As I wrote a while back, the scandal is not primarily about mistreatment, though each allegation of abuse tarnishes the image and reality of the U.S. further. The issue is the complete lack of accountability and due process. I think Amnesty International overstated the case by calling Guantanemo a "gulag." That comparison does not necessarily do justice to those poor legions who lived and died in the real gulags. But we're certainly moving in that direction, and I can sympathize with Amnesty International's desire to do and say something dramatic to raise this issue to national and international consciousness, and precisely like a real gulag, prisoners at Guantanemo are imprisoned because "someone" decides they belong there, with no recourse to anything resembling actual due process, and they stay there until the same "someones" who put them there decide they can go free, with no hope of oversight or expectation of actual justice.
And even for those who disagree with the term Amnesty International used, would a group of Republican senators now be paying any attention to this issue if AI hadn't caused an uproar and made the news? Probably not. Because this has finally become a public issue, there is some hope for change.
"In perpetuity." What an inhumanly rational-sounding term to describe a modern-day oubliette. Shame on us.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican senators called on Wednesday for the rights of foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay prison to be legally defined even as the Bush administration said the inmates could be jailed there "in perpetuity."
As I wrote a while back, the scandal is not primarily about mistreatment, though each allegation of abuse tarnishes the image and reality of the U.S. further. The issue is the complete lack of accountability and due process. I think Amnesty International overstated the case by calling Guantanemo a "gulag." That comparison does not necessarily do justice to those poor legions who lived and died in the real gulags. But we're certainly moving in that direction, and I can sympathize with Amnesty International's desire to do and say something dramatic to raise this issue to national and international consciousness, and precisely like a real gulag, prisoners at Guantanemo are imprisoned because "someone" decides they belong there, with no recourse to anything resembling actual due process, and they stay there until the same "someones" who put them there decide they can go free, with no hope of oversight or expectation of actual justice.
And even for those who disagree with the term Amnesty International used, would a group of Republican senators now be paying any attention to this issue if AI hadn't caused an uproar and made the news? Probably not. Because this has finally become a public issue, there is some hope for change.
"In perpetuity." What an inhumanly rational-sounding term to describe a modern-day oubliette. Shame on us.
