It was the blemish for the US administration during the Bush years - Guantanamo Bay. A prisoners’ camp installed after 9/11 where human rights were suspended during trials, where torture methods like water-boarding (where a person is made belief to be drowning) were used and where many so-called arrested terrorists turned out to be no terrorists at all in the end - and also Europeans were injustly imprisoned there, as the three British citizens that figure in the film The Road to Guantanamo (2008) by Michael Winterbottom.
Where have all the human rights gone?
But Guantanamo Bay also is a blemish for European foreign and interior politics. European states as well as their secret services also played their role in this part of the “war on terror” and cooperated with the CIA, especially by helping the CIA to transport prisoners (in secret flights that also used European airports). As a report by Amnesty International pointed out, “the role of European states in renditions and secret detention has ranged from active participation to tacit collusion”.
This means that Guantanamo Bay is not just an American affair and of American responsibility. The first act of new US president Barack Obama was the decicion to close the camp in 12 months’ time. A great piece of news. And now Europe cannot decide whether to accept former Guantanamo inmates or not. Is this so difficult a decision?
As the 27 foreign ministers cannot find a common stance, there will probably again only be national solutions: Portugal already announced, it would take detainees, France and Ireland are thinking about it, as well as the Czechs, while Austria does not want to take any. Germany’s foreign minister Steinmeier said, that one should think about giving asylum to the former prisoners. But of course, he said, we are not keen on accepting them. If Europe wants to be credible, it has to take on responsibility.
So let’s be pragmatic: There are 245 detainees left in the camp, of which 80 to 100 are assumed to have al Qaida connections. They will probably be dealt with in the US. The 145 to 165 remaining people should as soon as possible be granted a new life - this would mean about 6 former prisoners per EU country. Of course, this is only a Milchmädchenrechnung as we say in German (the calculation of a milkmaid, a sort of naive fallacy). As the European Parliament discussed on 28 February, only the 30 prisoners which face torture in their home countries might be coming to Europe. And do we really need to disagree upon giving those 30 people a new place to live in peace and freedom?
(28 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
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Nice, concise and to the point. I like the use of German word translated at the end, a personal touch.
Not many takers for these ideas among those responding to the European Parliament’s debate on this subject, I suspect. How representative are these views, I wonder? (They mostly come from the same place.)
Until lunchtime on Friday if you want to put the opposite case…
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2009/headlines/product.htm?language=EN&ref=20090202STO47917
Headline: “Saudi Arabia said Wednesday that 11 men released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay are now on the kingdom’s most-wanted list despite having attended its touted extremist rehabilitation program.” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_saudi_guantanamo_wanted) The US has released some 500 Gitmo detainees over the last five years. Sixty-one have returned to terrorism. That’s a recidivist rate of over 15 percent. Just saying.
The EU was asked to take those prisoners that cannot go home at all.
Maybe you heard the story about the five Uigures, Chinese muslims that were imprisoned in Guantanamo, who finally were accepted by Albania in 2006. Four now live in Tirana, one has applied for asylum in Sweden. http://www.welt.de/politik/article3091881/Die-Odysee-der-fuenf-Uiguren-aus-Guantanamo.html I read a reportage in the German weekly Die Zeit, where the men said: If we could ever go back to America, we would, it is still our land of dreams.
The article you cited also says the following: “‘Besides the 11 people (on the wanted list) who came from Guantanamo, there are still 106 people who have gone through this rehabilitation program and are doing OK,’ al-Turki [spokesman of the Saudi interior ministry] told the Associated Press by phone. Three others committed suicide in Guantanamo.”
It is a very difficult topic - and we are really speaking about human right here, I think.
Eamonn, I wouldn’t be too gullible in taking information from any DoD, much less so the Bush one. See for example http://washingtonindependent.com/26969/those-61-gitmo-recidivists-keep-popping-back-up
Small quote:
“They have counted people as ‘returning to the fight’ for their having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. The DOD has revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning—except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men.”
In addition: as the Netherlands always tries to take the moral high-ground in human rights issues, I think it’s curious - to say the least - the Dutch government has refused to take in ex-Gitmo detainees. If you care about illegal apprehension, international law and humand rights, you should do something about it.
I find the debate about these possible asylum-seekers hypocritical. There is freedom of movement within Europe after all. If these people will get a refugee status, and eventually become citizens, they can go wherever they please.
I think the most important issue would be to ask them and their lawyers, doctors. These people suffered isolation, torture and many sort of deprivation. I think it would be crucial to know where they have possible family links, language communities, where they can get medical aid, if needed, and not to allocate them to countries.
Just one example. Hungary has a certain capacity and experience with refugees that have post-war traumas because we had the largest first intake of former Yugoslavian war refugees in the 90s, being to closest country to the conflict. That would be a pro. On the other hand, Hungary has no really cosmopolitan cities and has only a single mosque in the country. It is also possible that some of the prisoners speak a language which has not a single speaker in Hungary. I wonder if there would be a quota allocation would not we expose such a person to more inhuman treatment to give him an asylum in Hungary?
To be honest, there is also a security issue. Proven or not, these people were detained on the battlefield, and may have grown a very strong urge to take revenge in the camp. I believe that a secret security control is inevitable. However, those countries which have no immigration from the Middle East and were not exposed to such issue do not have trained such for these issues.
Like it or not: I think Europe’s credibility is at stake, but I think its the co-operation of EU states and not the member states on a quota basis that can solve this problem.
According to my view it is a USA problem. If the detainees themselves ask asylum in a EU country, I think any EU country should agree that they deserve it and accept this. But it is a different thing if the USA wants them to be moved to the EU.
To Simon: The Dutch government stand is not against human rights, but in favor of international law. I think it is the moral duty of the Dutch government especially to defend international law, based on all the international law organisations based in The Netherlands and them not having a voice in the debate between countries.
Compare the Dutch stance to Serbia entering the EU. The Dutch government defends the interests of the international tribunal for former Yougoslavia here.