Pacific Views
You've been had. You've been took. You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok. - Malcolm X
|
| Pacific ViewsYou've been had. You've been took. You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok. - Malcolm X |
UN human rights investigators have rejected an invitation to visit the US prison at Guantánamo, saying that US authorities wouldn't accept 'standard terms' for a 'credible, objective and fair assessment of the situation of the detainees.'
The US holds more than 500 people at Guantánamo, only 9 of whom have been charged with any crime. UN investigators have been trying to visit the prison for four years; the US had only agreed to a visit this past October. After that invitation, UN investigators warned US authorities that they would need to talk to prisoners as well as to officials and prison staff — and that they would turn down the invitation unless this standard requirement was met. Despite the warning, the US said it would not allow prisoner visits.
US authorities are justifying this refusal by pointing to prisoner visits carried out by representatives of the International Red Cross. Since one international organization is already talking to prisoners, said US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 'we're not inclined to add [to] the number of people that would be given that extensive access.' As Rumsfeld well knows, however, the Red Cross does not make its reports on prisoner conditions public. And, as Rumsfeld also knows, Red Cross access to Guantánamo prisoners is useless for the purpose of public monitoring of those prisoners' conditions.
It's important to note the US was putting other conditions on a UN visit to Guantánamo. Of the UN's five human rights envoys, for example, the US has already refused to allow two of them to visit:
Washington invited ... Austria's Manfred Nowak, special investigator on torture; Pakistan's Asma Jahangir, who focuses on religious freedom; and Algeria's Leila Zerrougui, who looks into arbitrary detention.
It did not accept Argentina's Leandro Despouy, special investigator on the independence of judges and lawyers, and New Zealand's Paul Hunt, special rapporteur on mental and physical health, who were included in the envoys' request.
Despite this restriction, the remaining three investigators were still willing to visit Guantánamo — until the refusal to allow them to speak with prisoners, that is.
We have to wonder whether the US invitation for UN investigators to come to Guantánamo was anything other than a PR exercise, given that the restrictions that the US was trying to place on that visit would have rendered any visit pointless. What's most likely, we think, is that Dubya's administration deliberately set things up so that the UN would have no alternative but to refuse to visit the prison. After the refusal, US authorities could then say that they were willing to allow investigators to look around, but that the UN wasn't willing to come. Basically, Washington would get the political benefits of allowing an inspection without having to worry about an actual inspection finding any 'messy' facts at Guantánamo.
Given that Dubya's administration has been willing to play politics with the lives of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're sure that Washington would have no problems playing politics with the lives of its Guantánamo prisoners.
Via Reuters.
Posted by Magpie at November 19, 2005 12:10 AM | War on Terrorism | Technorati links |