Cubans Desperate
to 'Rip' Prison at Guantanamo Out of their Land
Recently,
the much criticized U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay turned ten years old.
According to Enrique Milanés León of Cuba's state-run Juventud Rebelde, ending
Washington's 1903 'theft' of Guantanamo Bay is something that burns in the
heart of every Cuban.
Detainees awaiting processing at Guantanamo in 2002: Closing the facility has turned out to be a lot harder than opening it, with allies hesitant to accept released, detainees and the U.S. Congress unwilling to allow released detainees onto U.S. territory - even if deemed 'not dangerous.'
Concertina wire divides
Guantanamo. And though the world may believe it is new - it is not. Around 1903,
Tomás Estrada
Palma, inaugurating a long chapter of theft, leased to the Yankees, at a very
reasonable price and in perpetuity, something that wasn’t theirs: The best
strip of land in that bay.
Ever since then, the "Americans"
have robbed us of our sea, obtaining what has long been thought of as a
metaphor of dispossession like those dreamed up in the fertile imagination of [Colombian
novelist] Garcia Marquez.
Much time has passed and it
weighs heavily. Yesterday it was ten years since the United States government,
with twenty first-time prisoners dressed on bright orange prison garb, established the
most expensive prison in the world there. Each detainee the U.S. tortures there costs
$800,000 a year. But the number of tears it has resulted in around the world is
incalculable.
The executioner is not only
mute, he also silences his victims. The foolishness we see is just the tip of
the iceberg: sharp as glass and cold of soul. We know that along with alleged
terror suspects, elderly people with dementia were sent there, along with
teachers, farmers, and adolescents arrested with no probable cause or guilt for
the setting of bombs.
Omar Kahdr was detained in
Afghanistan at just 15 years of age. He was taken to the dark side at Guantanamo.
They did everything to him, including lock him up in the sun and making it
impossible for him to rest. Omar had no nights, living condemned to eternal light and
unending wakefulness - that sparkling light that for many precedes death. Even the
moon and stars were out of reach for him.
And his is only one case. They
claim that there are still 171 "enemy combatants." We may never know precisely
how many there are, and perhaps the precise figure isn't so important. It’s
quite a prison. In Obama's own words they are condemned (to die without dignity
and not in combat). This type of detention is outlawed under the Geneva
Convention and leaves the concept of human rights twisted in barbed wire.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
As far as crime, for more
than a century Cubans have sung the Guajira Guantanamera,
extolled rebellion and uttered Marti’s simple verses in order to rip the bad
seed out of their land.
Every year, Washington sends payment
to Havana in compensation for its presence, but the island doesn’t cash those $4,085
checks. Dignity cannot be leased. Cuba collects the checks to display in a museum
that doesn’t yet exist: the one that will open right there, on the other side
of Guantanamo, when the United States liberates that section of sun-drenched bay.
