Article by Line-Marie Eichhorst
January 2022 marks 20 years since the opening of Guantanamo Bay, which became a worldwide symbol of human rights abuses by the US Government.
On 11 January 2002, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, suspected terrorists began arriving at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since then approximately 780 men and boys have been detained in the facility, most of them without charge or trial. In the 20 year long history of the prison only 12 detainees have been charged, and only two have been convicted.
At Guantánamo the US government can hold prisoners in a place where neither US nor international law applies. The Bush administration ruled that Guantanamo prisoners do not qualify as prisoners of war, and are therefore not legally protected under the Geneva Convention. Reports from within the facility revealed that detainees have suffered serious human rights violations, before or during their detention. This includes torture, solitary confinement, enforced disappearances, detainees being shackled, hooded, and threatened with dogs. When prisoners organized hunger strikes to protest their mistreatment, they were force-fed in a manner classified as torture by the United Nations.
Today, 39 detainees remain in Guantánamo. 27 of these men have never even been charged with any crime. They’re just being held indefinitely and more than a third have been cleared for release but are still being held. Many of the remaining men are torture survivors, all of the prisoners have been exposed to physical and psychological trauma through prolonged indefinite detention.
Guantánamo opened under George W. Bush and continued under Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. Although Obama came to office in 2009, with a policy to close the detention facility by January 2010 at the latest, he failed to do so. Democrats soon lost the majority in Congress to the Republicans, who then passed legislation preventing the administration from relocating prisoners to the United States.
Under President Trump, the office that used to negotiate transfers of Guantanamo prisoners was shut down. On 30 January 2018, President Trump revoked Obama’s executive order of 22 January 2009 ordering closure of the facility, and issued a new order making it clear that detention operations there would continue.
While Biden previously said he wants to close the prison, the NY Times reported that Guantanamo will be expanded under the Biden administration with plans for a new $4m courtroom to be built this year.
Three presidents pledged to close the prison without following through on that promise and failed to move the USA closer to accountability for their crimes. Guantanamo remains a symbol of racial and religious injustice,human rights abuses, and the US disregard for the rule of law.
Read more about this topic in the new Amnesty report “Right the Wrong” published in January 2021
Sign the Amnesty petition to tell President Biden to shut down Guantanamo:
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