Sunday, August 04, 2013

Every day in Guantanamo is Groundhog Day... whether you're a guard or a prisoner.

Thursday evening at Guantanamo: Mongolian stir-fry night at the Bayview bar and restaurant, just as it is every week. In the queue for food, I chat with an off-duty member of the prison camps’ military Joint Task Force, or JTF.

He’s wearing a T-shirt with an image of the actor Bill Murray. He points to it, recalling one of Murray’s best-known films: ‘You know that movie, Groundhog Day? That’s how it is in Gitmo. It doesn’t much matter if you’re a guard or a detainee. Every day’s the same as the last, and there’s no escape.’

Ten years after my first visit, I was granted five days’ access, a media privilege which has become increasingly rare. From the moment I arrived, it seemed clear that, just as in 2003, Gitmo remains in a state of conflict – a conflict made all the more depressing by its length.

In May, four-and-a-half years after President Obama promised to close Guantanamo within 12 months, he repeated his pledge. But so far, progress has been as sluggish as the iguanas who lurk beside the razor wire in the broiling Cuban sun.

For years, Obama barely mentioned Guantanamo at all, and in January 2013, he shut not the camps but the special department he set up in 2009 in order to accomplish the task. The response was a prisoner hunger strike, and in April – after detainees disabled most of the cameras that were supposed to be watching them and collected makeshift weapons – the storming by guards of one of the two main prison complexes. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Guantanamo costs US taxpayers over $5 billion: Report...
  2. What it means to starve for freedom in Guantanamo...
  3. Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) force fed in standard Guantánamo Bay procedure...
  4. Gitmo detainees ask US court to end force feeding...
  5. US steps up efforts to break Guantánamo hunger strike...
  6. Further calls for the closure of Guantanamo by the UN and the European...
  7. 125 more guards head to Guantanamo to "help" force-feed inmates...

No comments:

Post a Comment