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To do otherwise undermines the very democratic ideals and fundamental human rights we allege to uphold. The over 400 detainees currently being held at Guantanamo come from 35 countries. Most have been held for nearly five years without charge or access to legal counsel. Only 5 percent of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were captured by U.S. military forces.
The rest were turned over by other parties operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan while the U.S. was offering large sums for captured prisoners. Only eight percent of Guantanamo detainees are considered al-Qaida fighters by the U.S. government.
Conditions at the U.S. detention facility have been the focus of repeated condemnation by international human rights organizations. There have been more that 600 criminal investigations into allegations of detainee abuse, with each investigation often involving multiple U.S. soldiers, more than one victim and more than one instance of abuse.
At least 45 detainees have died in U.S. custody due to suspected or confirmed criminal homicide. At least eight people have been tortured to death.
The recently passed Military Commissions Act of 2006 enshrines such inhumane treatment as “waterboarding” — involving the repeated submerging of the subject’s head underwater, to induce the sensation of drowning — as an acceptable interrogation technique. It is clear that torture has become an integral part of U.S. policy and practice.
We cannot win any “war on terror” by engaging in torture. In doing so, we degrade ourselves and our nation, and become the evil we seek to destroy.
Jan. 11, 2007, will mark the fifth anniversary of the first prisoners’ arrival at Guantanamo Bay. On this day, hundreds will gather in Washington D.C., and elsewhere around the country, to demand an end to U.S. torture and indefinite detentions.
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