LONDON, 12 October 2003 — Two handcuffed prisoners in orange overalls kneel in the compound of Camp X-Ray. They can see and hear nothing. One slumps back on his heels as an armed guard keeps watch.
To their left is the interrogation center, behind them a watchtower with machine gun in place. The fences are high and a stiff autumn breeze blows through the barbed wire, fluttering the US flag.
Beyond the compound is a pub, a battered betting shop and a burger van whose owner may be surprised to find that a little corner of Cuba has been recreated on wasteland in Hulme, a mile from the center of Manchester in northwest England.
This is performance art with a mission to dump state terrorism on the doorsteps of the inner city.
It is meant to shock.
“As art goes, it is pretty straightforward,” said its creator, Jai Redman, speaking in his guard’s uniform from the other side of locked steel gates.
“There is nothing complicated about it.
This is a fully operational miniature version of the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay.
What is the point of painting a picture of it or showing photographs or a video of it? People have seen those and are immune to them. “I wanted to create a mirror image of the site and place it in the community which is the home of Ron Fiddler (known as Jamal Udeen), one of the British prisoners in the camp, and see what local reaction would be. “Mr. Redman argues that Mancunians can less easily dismiss the camp and what goes on there if it turns up down the road from their local Asda superstore.
“I am asking people to question whether we are the civilized nation we claim to be or whether we are just barbarians.
This camp is a weapon of state terrorism and the British people need to know what it is like. We are asking them if they are happy with it. “The camp, supported by donations and a small grant from the Arts Council in the northwest of England, will stay for nine days to make Mr. Redman’s protest clear.
“You can only march round the block with a million people escorted by the Metropolitan police so many times,” he said. “You get bored with that. This is something different.”
It is also chillingly authentic. Nine prisoners, one for each of the incarcerated Britons, have been recruited via the Internet.
They are not forced to sleep in open cages (this is Manchester in October, remember) and are not tortured. But their stay will be otherwise authentic and far from comfortable. They are woken at 5 a.m. by the call to prayer and later observe the flag-raising ceremony. They have a sick call at 11 a.m. and a mail call in the afternoon.
At tea time they are locked up in the interrogation center and lights out is at 9 p.m.
The daily menu does not vary: porridge for breakfast, vegetable soup for lunch and beans and rice for supper every day.
Cigarettes or books may be available — but only at the discretion of the guards, who are also volunteers. Some have already found it “heartbreaking” to stand watch over kneeling prisoners.
Guards are advised that they do not need to shave off all their hair. “It just needs to be short,” says a website instruction.
Most appear to have taken little notice.
“I find the piece very interesting because what goes on at Camp X-Ray has been very deliberately kept out of our gaze,” said a man calling himself Joe Smith as he arrived for guard duty. “And it’s art in the community rather than on a gallery wall.”
The door of the interrogation center opens again and a bowed, goggled and shackled prisoner stumbles out, escorted by a guard.
He passes through a gate, uses the portable toilet and goes back where he came from.
