News of the first detainees to commit suicide in Guantanamo Bay — two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen — has brought further condemnation of this isolated detention center. Amnesty International has hit all the right chords in response to the suicides, qualifying the incident as the “tragic results of years of arbitrary and indefinite detention” and called the prison “an indictment” of the Bush administration’s deteriorating human rights record. Amnesty is simply reflecting what many world leaders and public and human rights organizations have been saying for a long time.
It is unfortunate and in this particular case too late that the Bush administration has not been listening, or if it has, then not agreeing or unwilling to bend. The tragedy was just waiting to happen. There have been increasing displays of defiance from many of the over 460 prisoners. The three who killed themselves had engaged in previous hunger strikes to protest their indefinite incarceration and had been force-fed, before quitting the protest action. Last month’s near riot should have rung alarm bells that the situation was becoming desperate. There have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the US began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002.
The deaths have forced the Bush administration on the defensive as it conducted an extraordinarily quick get-in-touch operation with the United Nations, European Union, embassies of Middle Eastern countries, as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross. Such a global sweep is definitely a sign of concern over the diplomatic fallout, but it does not appear likely that the administration will at any time soon meet the growing chorus calling for the closure of Guantanamo, as has been sought by among others Tony Blair, Angela Merkel and the UN which stated last month that holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo violated the world’s ban on torture.
As late as Friday, a day before the suicides, Bush had said he hoped to “empty” Guantanamo by sending some detainees home and trying the most dangerous in US courts. Will that really transpire? There must be doubt when out of a total of 759 detainees only 10 have ever been formally charged as terror suspects and none have gone on trial. There must be doubt when you hear one of the prison commanders describing the suicides not as acts of desperation but acts of war. Why can’t the US administration admit that these people were driven by despair, despair because they are being held lawlessly with no end in sight? They’re not being brought before any independent judges. They are neither being charged nor convicted of any crime.
These deaths reflect the desperation for a basic human need — a need for justice, a need to have someone hear what these incarcerated people have to say, then be duly punished if a crime has been committed or be set free. Three of the detainees are now gone without ever having seen a court or enjoyed a system of justice that is held so dearly by their captors.
