Guantanamo Conference

March 5, 2003
8:30 - 11:30 a.m.
The Root Room of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Washington, D.C.

Participant Remarks How the U.S. acquired Guantanamo Is Guantanamo U.S sovereign territory? Do detainees have rights?

Related Articles Position of the Cuban Government on Guantanamo AUN expert warns over Cuban base Detainees are denied access to U.S. courts

Conference Brochure

A Conference on the Guantanamo Naval Base Guantanamo 100 Years Later: From Coaling Station to Penal Colony

The United States acquired the Guantanamo Naval Base a century ago this year, in 1903, as a coaling station to help American naval units protect the approaches to the Panama Canal. The world has changed. The United States no longer controls the Panama Canal and, for that matter, no longer uses coal-burning naval vessels. As we mark the 100th anniversary of the base, it would now seem appropriate to examine its status and to ask ourselves if it is not time to begin thinking of ways to return it to the control of the Cubans, whose sovereign territory it is.

There are certainly ways in which this could we worked out to the benefit of both sides. It has been suggested, for example, that the base might be converted into a regional medical center, with patients and doctors from all over the Caribbean.

Before any of that can be contemplated, however, we must address the present use to which the base is being put by the Bush Administration. In January of 2002, it began bringing so-called "unlawful belligerents" from the Afghanistan war for long-term detention at Guantanamo. In other words, they are denied prisoner-of-war status. Now well over a year later, some 625 are still being held, in many cases without even being told why they are detained.

As a gesture of its full support for the struggle against terrorism, Cuba did not object to the United States bringing these detainees to Guantanamo. This, then, is not an issue between the United States and Cuba; rather it is a question of American justice. The government has a right to interrogate and investigate these men. But it does not have a right to hold them indefinitely without access whatever to due process. Many have been held for over a year now without hearings or any charges being filed against them. The government acknowledges that some are probably innocent, but it leaves them there in political limbo, arguing that as they are at Guantanamo and beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. law, the government can hold them as long as it wishes without judicial review or access to due process. Indeed, the government is now in the process of building a permanent prison to house them. Is this then to become an American version of Devil's Island?

It must be said that so far, the government's handling of this matter would seem to violate the very principles of fairness and due process which are at the core of our belief system. This cannot but weaken the whole American system of justice.

It is time to take a careful look at this anomalous situation and, if it seems appropriate, to call for corrective action. That will be the principal objective of this conference. And it would seem a most propitious moment to debate the matter, for as the conference is being held, the Bush Administration will be on the brink of war with Iraq, or will already have begun it. More detainees may soon be on the way to Guantanamo.

8:30 - 9 a.m - registration and coffee

9 - 10 a.m. - first panel to discuss the history of base, the treaty which gives
us the right to be there, and the question of whether there are compelling
military reasons to retain the base

Chairperson -- Professor Cynthia McClintock,
George Washington University
Panelists - Rear Admiral (Retired) Eugene Carroll
Wayne S. Smith - Former Chief of the U.S. Interests Section
In Havana

10-10:15 a.m. - coffee break

10:15 - 11:30 a.m. - second panel to discuss the legality - or illegality - and the
inappropriateness of holding the detainees at Guantanamo. What
should be done?

Chairman - William Butler - Chairman Emeritus of the International
Commission of Jurists

Panelists - Michael Ratner - President, Center for Constitutional Rights
Robert Muse - Muse and Associates.

11:30 a.m. adjournment

William J. Butler is the Chairman Emeritus of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the President of the American Association for the ICJ. Over the years, on behalf of the ICJ, Mr. Butler led human rights missions to Iran, the Phillipines, Guatemala, Palau, South Africa, and Uruguay. He also represented the ICJ at the U.N. Special Summit in Copenhagen and the Rome Conference establishing a permanent International Criminal Court. He founded the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and co-founded the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at New York University's Law School.

Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., (Ret) is a veteran of 37 years of active service in the U.S. Navy. His duties included combat operations in Korea and Vietnam as a Navy pilot and Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier, USS MIDWAY. He later served in Europe as Commander of the Carrier Striking Force of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and as Director of all U.S. military operations in Europe and the Middle East. He is Vice President Emeritus of the Center for Defense Information.

Cynthia McClintock is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, specializing in the politics of Latin America. During 1994-1995, she was President of the Latin American Studies Association, an international scholarly association of more than 5,000 members.

Robert Muse is a lawyer in Washington with substantial experience in U.S. laws relating to Cuba. Among his clients are major corporations engaged in international trade and foreign direct investment. He is a member of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association, The American Society of International Law, and the American Branch of the International Law Association

Michael Ratner is the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Center is currently handling several cases representing detainees held at Camp X in Cuba and the Turkmen case, which involves post 9/11 detainees in the United States. Ratner acted as one of the principal counsels in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Bay. He has litigated a dozen cases challenging a President's authority to go to war without congressional approval.

Wayne S. Smith is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. When he left the Foreign Service in 1982, after 25 years of service at such posts as Argentina, Brazil and the Soviet Union, he was Chief of Mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba, and regarded as the State Department's leading expert on Cuba.