Will Obama Fulfill His Promise To Close Down Guantanamo Bay Prison?
24 January 2016By Al-Ikhwah Al-Mujahidun
Barack Obama – in his annual speech to Congress – stated that by the end of
this year he will shut down Guantanamo Bay Prison. During his campaign for
presidency some eight years ago, he also made this promise to his electorate
that he will close down this notorious prison. After being elected he again
promised to close down the prison within 100 days of his presidency. Yet it
has been seven years into his presidency and Guantanamo Prison is still live
and operational.
Judging from his past track record this promise will also carry little weight
since this oft-promised initiative will surely be resisted by a large section
of American society and in any event, due to bureaucratic red tape, the
practical steps required to achieve it could possibly take years to fulfill.
The surest sign of a political leader's failure is his inability to fulfill
his express promises. In fact the biggest failure of Obama has been his
failure to fulfill his many campaign promises. Obama's presidential campaign
was accompanied by an atmosphere of euphoria in that country. People were
cheering that for the first time in American history we have a black
president. Obama capitalized on that atmosphere and made grandiose promises to
transform American society and its political culture. Yet he is now nearing
the end of his second term in office and with little to show for it. Perhaps
his only major success was the implementation of the Obamacare Schee. All his
other promises have gone awry with the passage of time.
As most readers are probably aware, Guantanamo Bay is the world infamous
prison where humans are kept like animals in cages – which are designed so
that the prisoners can neither stand upright in them nor walk properly.
Prisoners have their hands and feet cuffed, are ill-fed, and physically and
psychologically tortured as well as being denied basic medicine.
Prisoners are subjected to new and novel methods of torture. Their beliefs are
mocked and their values are derided on a regular basis. Their Islamic culture
is ridiculed and their sacred belongings debased. They are harassed physically
and their family members are threatened. Their personal correspondence is
vetted and often they are given fake letters, purportedly, from their
families.
Some of the prisoners were kept under these circumstances for around a decade
and denied any family visits, or the right to an attorney, or a due judicial
process. Many of these prisoners were kept under such torturous conditions for
years by the so-called defenders of human rights; some prisoners continue to
be held there till this day.
Guantanamo Bay Prison has become the symbol of inhumanity and torture around
the world. The injustices and torture perpetuated in this and other American
operated prisons are nothing short of the concentration camps operated by the
Nazis. Surely had such prisons being operated by Saddam, or Iran or North
Korea they would have been accused of the gravest violations against human
rights and dignity. Nay they would have been accused of genocide and crimes
against humanity.
Yet here we have the world's supposed defender of human rights establishing
and operating such prisons and yet international human rights organizations
have adopted acrimonious silence regarding this. These organizations inflate
even the slightest violations of others into crimes against humanity and yet
say nothing regarding the concentration camps operating in their own back
yards.
Even now it is time for the Americans to close down Guantanamo Prison and all
other black prison sites, let the incarcerated return to their families and
enjoy their basic human rights and live a life of human dignity. And by doing
so, finally reverse the degradation of the ideals their forefathers had set
for them.
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