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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

Kafka and Uighurs at Guantanamo

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/112608b.html

Excerpt:

“There is no right to due process for an alien who is not here,” insisted the 44th Solicitor General of the United States, Gregory G. Garre, proudly representing the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Garre is a teacher of the law, you see, and was attempting to show a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit why one of their colleagues in a lower court had overreached.

Garre claimed that U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina had exceeded his authority on Oct. 7, 2008, in ordering that 17 men held in Guantanamo for almost seven years be brought to his court for a fair hearing on the modalities of their release.

Urbina wanted government lawyers to face the 17 prisoners and present the government’s argument as to why they should remain in detention.

“Aliens have no rights,” Garre kept repeating. And they REALLY have no rights, he seemed to be saying, if they are “not physically in the United States.”
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Never mind that the detainees had been deemed NON-enemy-combatants; never mind that the U.S. government had already conceded that, despite initial suspicions that they were terrorists, the U.S. government could adduce no evidence to support that accusation.

Never mind that they had been unlawfully incarcerated for almost seven years. Garre spoke of “unlimited Executive power” in these matters. He kept insisting, “We have the authority to detain them.” Garre added that the Justice Department had tried hard to find a country willing to accept them but failed.

The unfounded suspicion of terrorism, for which the U.S. was responsible, did not make them attractive candidates for immigration. And besides, no country wanted to risk antagonizing China.

You see, these prisoners are Uighurs, a Turkic people of Central Asia (pronounced WEE'-gurz), five million of whom live in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang. The Han Chinese have suppressed the Uighurs, their culture and their strong sense of nationalism for decades.

The Chinese government is fond of referring to Uighur nationalists as “terrorists,” and has been pleased to use the U.S.-led global “war on terrorism” as an additional pretext to suppress them.
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So how did Uighurs get to Guantanamo?

Fleeing Chinese oppression, many Uighurs found their way to Afghanistan where they were living in a self-contained camp when the U.S. attacked in October 2001. They were captured in the wake of the fighting, many of them by Pakistani bounty hunters who proceeded to sell them to U.S. forces.

Twenty-two Uighurs ended up in Guantanamo, joining others with the undeserved Rumsfeldian sobriquet “the worst of the worst.” After “interviewing” them extensively by late 2003, U.S. interrogators had concluded that few, if any, were a threat.

Under international law, the only country required to accept displaced persons is their country of origin. But China had been making a practice of incarcerating Uighurs with little if any proof of any involvement in violent acts. The Uighurs in Guantanamo did not want to trade one prison for another.

No third country, however, would accept them — except Albania, which welcomed five in 2006.
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It was the tone of the Solicitor General’s argument that hit me strongest. Here is an unmitigated tragedy for which the U.S. (together with Pakistani bounty hunters) is responsible.

Small wonder that on Oct. 7, Judge Urbina shouted, “Enough. Six-plus years is enough. Bring them here and let the government defend its extraordinary position.”

There has been no information on what the three-judge panel that met on Monday will eventually decide, or when. It may take weeks, we were told.
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I thought the Declaration of Independence was what we were all about as Americans:

“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…”

Where does it say “except for Uighur aliens?”
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Guantanamo is an abomination — a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution bequeathed to us and to our children. A negation of the Judeo-Christian heritage many of us claim. It could hardly be clearer:

“You shall not violate the rights of the alien.” (Deuteronomy 24:17)
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