Gitmo turns 10
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On Wednesday this week, protesters exterior the White House in Washington will wage a demonstration ten years to the day after a military prison was opened at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ­For a ten years, hundreds of males have been held and tortured without charge in one of the biggest breaches of human rights ever conducted by the American government, and also the largest in recent times internationally. Another anniversary for Gitmo will occur afterwards this month, however. In less than two weeks on January 22, Americans will remember the three-year anniversary of US President Barack Obama vowing to shut down the prison — a assure that has still gone unfilled. It was a campaign assure certain by Obama on the highway to the White House and signing an executive buy to shut Gitmo was one of the first things he did adhering to his January 2009 inauguration. “This is me adhering to through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of carry out, not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard,” Obama said at the time. Almost three years afterwards, however, the cells at Gitmo are still packed and dozens of males are imprisoned for crimes that they very well may have had nothing to do with. The president claims he is working on it. “The commitment that the president has to closing Guantanamo Bay is as firm today as it was during the (2008) campaign,” White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted on Monday. But for the many who recognized and viewed the Gitmo problem as a serious issue that needed to be addressed by anyone would could bring hope and change to an America crushed under two terms of the George W Bush administration, that commitment is a campaign assure gone abandoned and all but forgotten. Not only has Obama done nothing further to shut down Gitmo, the recent signing of the Countrywide Defense Authorization Act allows the US to imprison American citizens in the exact military detainment that the United States subjects suspected terrorists of. “Our government is not healing people according to the principles that this country was launched on,” Helen Schietinger of Witness Against Torture tells AFP. Her group plans on holding protests in DC and elsewhere across the world on Wednesday in recognition of the anniversary of Guantanamo’s opening. Although President Obama formerly taught constitutional law and insisted on closing Gitmo on the campaign trail, his failure to do so coupled with his recent additions to the Countrywide Defense Authorization Act suggest to many that the administration has occur up far too short on its earlier pleas. The US government “continues to detain human beings without because of process and has essentially thrown the Constitution out the window,” adds Schietinger. To the White House, it isn’t that simple. “We are all are aware of the obstacles to getting that done as quickly as the president wanted to get it done … but the president’s commitment hasn’t changed at all,” insists Carney .“We will continue to abide by that commitment and work towards its fulfillment.” That fulfillment, however, has remained absent throughout the entire administration. Adhering to the executive buy signed during the start of his presidency, Obama’s insistence that Gitmo would get shut down within a year was temporarily delayed while the administration investigated the best possible route to do so. Seventeen months after he entered the White House, Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), said of Obama’s assure, "…the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see.” While the White House continues to be unwilling to advance its claims, advocates campaigning against Gitmo continue to do so as they enter their second ten years of opposition. On Wednesday, protest will be conducted across the world, including a planned human-chain from the White House in Washington reaching all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol