FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Wayne Smith or Tiana Gierke
Center for International Policy
(202) 232 -3317
Fax (202) 232-3440
tiana@ciponline.org
www.ciponline.org
Abuses at Guantanamo and the Administration's
Misrepresentations
Washington
D.C., June 3, 2005 -
Today the Center for International Policy (CIP) is releasing
a report entitled "Guantanamo: Our Own Devil's Island?"
It is based on a conference held in April dealing with the abuse
of prisoners at Guantanamo and the fact that in turning the
base into a detention center, the U.S. is in flagrant violation
of the international treaty on which its presence at Guantanamo
is based. Participants in the conference were Wayne Smith of
Center for International Policy, Michael Ratner of the Center
for Constitutional Rights, Wendy Patten of Human Rights Watch,
and Robert Muse of Muse & Associates.
CIP also wishes to take sharp issue with statements over the
past few days by senior members of the Bush administration to
the effect that there have been no abuses at Guantanamo and
that any reports to the contrary are "ridiculous."
Referring to an Amnesty International report dated May 25 of
"atrocious human rights violations" at Guantanamo
and other U.S. detention centers, Vice President Cheney on May
30, for example, said the Amnesty accusations were "lies."
Detainees at Guantanamo, the vice president went on, have been
"well treated, treated humanely and decently….What
we are doing down there has, I think, been done perfectly appropriately."
But this statement is as false as the vice president's flat
assertion on August 26 of 2002 that: "We now know that
Saddam Hussein has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."
And President Bush on May 31 dismissed the Amnesty report as
"absurd" and said it was based largely on the stories
of "people who hate America," i.e., the detainees.
But reports of abuses come not just from detainees and former
detainees, they come also from the eye-witness accounts of members
of the International Red Cross and FBI agents who were on the
base (and surely FBI agents do not "hate America").
In other words, the president's statement was also false. As
false as his insistence before he invaded Iraq that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction ready to fire. Or as false as
his statement on July 14, 2003, that we had given Hussein "a
chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them
in. And, therefore, after a responsible request, we decided
to remove him from power."
This, of course, was an outright falsehood, as President Bush
had to have known as he spoke those words. The inspectors had
been allowed back in and wanted to press ahead with their work.
But Bush at the time insisted the threat was so imminent that
we didn't have time to wait for inspections, and so we went
to war.
General Richard B. Meyers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, also got into the act. The Amnesty report, he said
on May 29, was "absolutely irresponsible." "We
struggle with how to handle [the detainees]," he said,"
but we've always handled them humanely and with the dignity
they should be accorded."
Always? The evidence indicates otherwise, as is made clear in
our just-issued IPR described above.
If
you wish to receive a hard copy of "Guantanamo: Our Own
Devil's Island?" please contact us at cubaintern@ciponline.org
or 1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW Suite 801, Washington, DC
20036. Provide a return address so we can mail the report and
a check or money order for $2.50. Free downloads are available
at http://ciponline.org/cuba/IPR_Guantanamo.pdf.
