The number of Guantanamo detainees participating in the hunger strike there has now risen to 75.
That report, by AP’s Ben Fox, quoted Navy Commander Robert Durand as trying to downplay the seriousness of this action by the detainees by calling it an “attention-getting tactic”. Fox also quotes Durand as saying,
- “The hunger-strike technique is consistent with al-Qaida practice and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention to bring international pressure on the United States to release them back to the battlefield.”
Right…. Hunger-striking also happens to be “consistent with the practice of” Mahatma Gandhi, the courageous British women activists who were campaigning for the right to vote, etc etc.
Durand doesn’t mention this. I wonder why not.
Nor does he see fit to mention the violation of the fundamental right of habeas corpus that the detainees are campaigning against.
Habeas corpus is a bedrock of personal liberty in the Anglo-American system of law and society. Since I studied Latin for five years, I always knew that habeas corpus means “that you may have the body”, and I’d always assumed that it meant that individuals were thereby somehow given the right to have control over their own bodies (i.e., to enjoy personal liberty). Well, on reading that Wikipedia article linked to there, it seems clear that it does mean that– but it means it in a way even more profound than I had thought.
It’s not that through habeas corpus “the system” gives individuals the right to control their own bodies, but rather that antecedent to that the individual is assumed to already have the right to her or his own body, and that it’s the state, when it wants to infringe on that right, that needs to show ironclad due cause for doing so.
This concept of personal liberty was of course fully enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence, which states,
- We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Note that this speaks about “all Men”, not merely “all US citizens”. Also, of course, these days– thanks in good part to those suffragist hunger-strikers of 95 years ago– “men” also includes “women”…
So the issue for the detainees in Guantanamo– and in Bagram and all the other places where my government holds detainees who have not had the benefit of a trial, is give them liberty, or give them a trial that will show them and everyone else why it is right that they be deprived of their liberty for some period of time.
Some of these detainees have now been deprived of their liberty for 54 months. 54 months of treatment that has often been inhumane, brutal, and by design extremely disorienting. 54 months of their loved ones often not knowing whether they are dead or alive. 54 months of isolation, psychological attack on their personhood, and uncertainty.
Give them liberty, or give them a trial. It’s as straightforward as that.
The only circumstance under US (or international) law in which there would legally be a third alternative is if these detained individuals are classified as POWs, in which case they could continue to be held without trial for the duration of the relevant hostilities. But in return for the detaining government having that power, it has to guarantee a separate set of rights to the detainees: that they not be subjected to interrogation, and that the phsyical and psychological conditions of their detention meet the standards defined in the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush administration chose not to designate these detainees as POWs. Instead, it has used the category of “unlawful enemy combatants” in an attempt to deny them access both to the protections for POWs, and to the normal protections they would have under civilian law. That move deeply violated the US Constitution, as well as all relevant international law.
The Bushites cannot simply continue to hold these men– who between Gitmo, Bagram, and other extra-legal holding centers could well number more than 1,000 individuals– in this state of legal limbo forever. In fact, it should not continue for a day longer– for any of them.
Why do they not bring these men to trial? Cmdr. Durand accused the men of seeking to be released so they could “return to the battlefield.” But if they have trials and are found guilty of serious crimes, then they wouldn’t be released any time soon, would they?
Actually, the problem for Cmdr. Durand and the whole machinery of the Bush administration above him is that bringing these detainees to any form of a fair trial would be hugely problematic for the administration. For reasons including these:
- * In a fair trial, we the public would learn that for many of these detainees the evidence against them doesn’t amount to very much (and for many, might not actually amount to anything.) Therefore, the justification for having held them so long and treated them so badly would not live up to what the administration’s people have claimed until now.
* In a fair trial, the detainees would be able to speak to the broaoder public about the way they have been treated for the past many months.
Would it reassure the apparatchiks in the administration to know that these are not new issues and concerns? That every European colonial power in recent history also faced them as it tried to “square” its commitment to a version of liberal politics at home with the brutality of its attempt to suppress anticolonial movements overseas?
Maybe not. But anyway, this current dilemma is one for the Bush administration to face.
As for the rest of us, all we can say is, “Give them liberty, or give them a decent trial.”