Guantanamo: A Disgrace to Humanity

By Essa bin Mohammed Al-Zedjali June 28, 2006

Arab News, June 27, 2006

In a recent appearance on German TV, US President George Bush showed a desire for closing down the accursed Guantanamo prison. This is no surprise considering the spate of criticism coming almost daily from various human rights organizations and peace activists worldwide.

They have called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, opened by the US administration in 2002 to house a number of suspects in total isolation from the outside world. The inmates are put under unimaginably harsh conditions and are under strict round-the-clock watch and hence cannot even think of escape from the jail.

While calling for the dratted prison to be closed down, human rights organizations point to the clear breach of international conventions, laws, regulations and, importantly, rights of individuals.

Most of the Guantanamo inmates have not been brought before the court and have spent years without being aware of their charges. They protest their innocence even under pressure from the interrogators to admit to grave crimes. What seems intriguing is the US administration's keenness in keeping the affairs of the jail under wraps. The inmates have no contact with their relatives except through some letters that, in any case, take a long time to reach them.

Human rights organizations are banned from visiting the jail. The UN Commission on Human Rights asked for a visit to the prison and received a response after four years, allowing only three of its members inside for just a day to meet the administrators, commissioners and the guards but not the prisoners.

This type of strict ban on rights bodies and others bespeaks the US administration's attempts to hide the acute hardships suffered by the inmates. If good conditions had prevailed in the jail, the US administration would surely have opened the doors for visitors whenever required.

There is no smoke without fire. The widespread talk about the Guantanamo jail, the contents of the letters of the detainees to their relatives and the statements of the released prisoners point to torture of the prisoners and other human rights abuses. All this is a clear breach of human rights.

The US has always presented itself as a champion of human rights worldwide, and has called for justice, freedom and human rights at every opportunity. But what happens in Guantanmo prison contravenes all international laws, human rights and the US administration's own claims. The US government ignores international calls and even calls from within the US for closing down the jail. The existence of the Guantanamo prison with all its inhuman conditions is certainly a disgrace to humanity. It is absolutely wrong to keep the suspects in prison for years on without being brought before tribunals. None of the inmates knows for sure when he would be released or on what charges he has been imprisoned. No doubt, the world community agrees to the principle that there should be strict and fair punishment for the wrongdoers. But for this, the US ought to bring the detainees before the court. Besides, it needs to open the jail doors for human rights organizations to monitor the conditions inside. Human rights and justice should not remain as mere slogans; what is important is to put these principles into practice.

The conditions in the Guantanamo prison represent an obvious return to the age of slavery and are a disgrace to humankind.

What if an American citizen is shut up in a Guantanamo-type jail for years without trial? What would be the US administration's stance then?

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    Essa bin Mohammed Al-Zedjali is editor in chief of The Times of Oman.

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America's Destructive Behavior: A Question of Accountability

By Reem Al-Faisal June 28, 2006

Arab News, June 27, 2006

We begin with aggression and conquest directed against two sovereign nations and the subsequent death and destruction of life and land.

Belligerence directed at most of the nations of the world. Utter contempt and disdain for international laws and accords. The illegal abduction and imprisonment of individuals from every nation subjecting them to torture and humiliation while denying them any legal representation.

This is a short list of the recent actions of the United States of America and most of it has been directed against the Muslim world. Although Venezuela and North Korea have gotten a small share of America's destructive behavior, it has saved the lion's share for the Muslims.

Though most of Europe has stood back and even condemned the attack on Iraq, it has gone along in every other belligerent act directed against the Muslim world, its culture and religion. From joining America in its raid on Afghanistan to its attitude toward Sudan, Iran, Palestine, Somalia, the abduction and transportation of Muslims through European lands -
 or shall we call it rendition - and the list is endless.

In truth, the atavistic ferocity that has dominated Western culture since the age of Enlightenment and which has been the bane of every other nation on earth for the last two centuries hasn't dissipated in the least; it simply took on a more nuanced hue.

Today the West doesn't attack you because it feels it is superior to you and wants to pillage your natural resources and wealth; it attacks you because it feels its "democracy" is superior to you and it still wants to pillage your natural resources and wealth.

Let's, for example, take the case of Iran. By what right does the West hold this country accountable? It is its legal right to produce enriched uranium. It takes gall for nations which have thousands of nuclear bombs and which have already used them on civilians to question the right of a nation which hasn't attacked any other nation in a century at least and has on the contrary been aggressed upon as recently as a decade ago by Iraq which was supported at the time and abetted by those same nations which question the intentions of Iran today.

The West that has conquered and destroyed two nations that have never attacked it sees itself as the guardian of world peace.

Just a small reminder. Taleban, though reprehensible, have never attacked anyone beyond their borders and were willing to hand over Osama Bin Laden; yet the West considers itself the defender of peace? Those who this very minute are directing or condoning some form of destructive behavior toward innocent civilians either in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine have the effrontery to question Iran's intentions.

One is in constant amazement when Western nations lecture the so-
 called Third World or developing world or call it what you will world on democracy and human rights and the desire for peace while right in front of our eyes Palestinians are mowed down like weeds on a beach. We hear no condemnation from the defenders of peace or see no action from the United Nations. Worse, they stop us from saving our own people from starvation in the name of peace.

The West is playing a dangerous game with the Muslims that will eventually lead to a great conflagration that will leave no one unharmed. We the Muslims are not like the long-suffering Jews, victims of Western aggression for far longer than us. The Jews have never had nations to support them; they have always been at the mercy of the West and now they have stuffed them into a ghetto and left them to fight and inevitably lose against the only people who have been the succor of the Jews throughout the centuries - the Arabs and Muslims. There is a sort of macabre joke played by the West on the Jews in Sikes-Picot (the secret agreement on the allocation of Ottoman Arab territories to spheres of influence of the European powers. Negotiations between Britain, France, Russia, and later Italy, led to this agreement which initially envisaged an international regime for Palestine since sites sacred to the three world religions are located there). They massacred them for centuries and then they threw them in the ultimate ghetto, "Israel", to spend the rest of their existence fending off the indigenous inhabitants of the lands they stole.

The Muslims will not be silent for long; in fact they have never been silent. Simply their resistance will become more vocal and if need be more violent as in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan.

The death of Al-Zarqawi will free the resistance of Iraq from the stain that he was and will leave Iraqis free to continue the job of liberating their country from American occupation.

Muslims will remember every action carried out by the West against them in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Iran, Sudan and the list is endless. They will one day demand answers from the West and accountability.

We will not simply be assimilated as the Jews were and forget where the responsibility for the destruction that has befallen us lies.

Though our betrayal of ourselves carries a great responsibility for the terrible state we are in today, it does not absolve the West from blame.

As for the statement by a certain American official about the alleged suicide of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay as "
a good PR move", it should be held apart as an emblem from all other egregious acts committed by Western powers against us. This statement should hang on the wall of every Muslim house to remind us of the barbarity we are facing and fighting against and strengthen our resolve in the defense of our rights as human beings to exist and protect our civilization from impending doom.

We should start by creating our own world court under the auspices of the OIC that can try and condemn all those nations and individuals who have instigated or committed crimes against the Muslims. Since its creation, the UN has been nothing but a Western tool which has harmed Muslims more than it has benefited them and given our enemies and all who wish to destroy us a legal cover to pillage and kill in Muslim lands at will from Palestine to Somalia to Afghanistan and the latest masquerade of boycotting the legally elected government of Hamas by the West and preventing all other nations from helping them is more proof that we can no longer get our rights from a Western organization disguised as an international body built to protect the rights of all nations.

It is time to liberate Muslim nations from the tyranny of Western institutions like the UN, World Bank, IMF, which have brought nothing but misery and pain to all of us. If we want our rights to be respected we have to impose them through our own international institutions and not look for justice from a source which only works to protect its national interests and which rarely conforms to our desires and even less to ideals as human rights or justice since justice is served only to those who demand it with strength.

- Reem Al Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.