Guantanamo Bay, or Gutimo, unfolds the stories of many detained without concrete evidence or being given a chance for trial. Locked up naked and shackled to a cold floor, these people are treated beyond any scope of lawful or justified punishment. They lie for days and weeks with their hands locked, having urinated and defecated on themselves. The question that arises is: which law allows such punishments? Not any of the ones that are written in the constitution of any democracy.
Guantanamo Bay is the detention camp that was established on January 11, 2002, exactly 21 years ago under George W. Bush’s administration and is now managed by the United States Navy. Two American presidents have pledged in the past to close this prison, but none have succeeded, with Guantanamo Bay still having a population of 31 as of March 2023. The treatment given to these people is not a punishment that can be considered humane. There is an area where the accused are given punishment, but the line becomes very blurry when people with little evidence against them are forced into horrendous torture to fulfill the idea of unjustified hatred.
Guantanamo Bay has had 780 people detained since 2002, which has been reduced to 31, but if we think deeper, even one life suffering from excruciating torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging, and religious persecution is enough to understand the pain and to feel shameful about.
Former President Barack Obama and current President of the United States Joe Biden claimed to close this in their tenure, but Gauntamo Bay continues to stain the history of America.
The closure of Guantanamo is strongly opposed by Republicans and Congress because, for them, it is considered “humane,” “legal,” “proper,” and “consistent with the Geneva Convention,” when it is totally not in reality. The detainees there are the ones who went to Afghanistan either for marriage or to study in madrasas, as it is “established that over 80% of the prisoners were captured not by the Americans on the battlefield but by Pakistanis and Afghans, often in exchange for bounty payment.” Guantanamo Bay claims to have been built as an answer to 9/11, but why are people traded for benefit tortured there? People who are innocent, people who are not linked to any terrorist activity. For them, it is said, “We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe.” In highlighting their idea of interrogation, it is important to mention that the New York Times revealed on July 2, 2008, that their entire interrogation class was based on “Chinese Communist” interrogation methodologies that the United States itself alleged were used during the Korean War to obtain confessions. The techniques of these interrogations involve sleep deprivation, prolonged constraint, locking in confined and cold cells, etc. They move through it with their idea that “every one of them can rot in hell, but as long as they don’t, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”
Indefinite detentions without trials are a breach of human rights by Amnesty International and a violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The detainees are hung by their wrists or ankles and are beaten and subjected to electric shocks without being given a chance of trial because the evidence against them is too weak to prove the guilt of the charges they have been held for.
Juma Al Dossary, one of the past detainees, claimed that he was interrogated a hundred times, beaten, tortured with broken glass, barbed wire, and broken cigarettes, and sexually abused. Juma Al Dossary is one of many such cases. Guantanamo Bay has in its records multiple suicide attempts and actual suicides. It has become a monument of fear and injustice.
Bottom line: the people tortured are the ones taken away from their families and loved ones. They are sons, husbands, and fathers to some, but the administration of Guantanamo Bay can still sleep peacefully knowing that they incarcerated innocent people without any real accusation. One thing that has been proven time and again is that putting an end to inhumane agendas is far more difficult than starting them.
How many people are actually so tortured that they attempt suicide, where ending life is better than surviving reality? Guantanamo Bay is one of the detention camps. Can we think of any other such camps? Yes. Ughyur detention camps
This is what humans are doing to each other.
