Translated “Avante!” article by Jorge Cadima, Member of the PCP International Department

Obama, on releasing his official statement, during his visit to Cuba, proclaimed that “ Human Rights are universal”. The great capital media, parroted together the usual lies on human rights violation, in Cuba. Forgetting to mention, that human rights are crudely violated within the 120 km2 USA military base, in Guantanamo, under his tutelage.

The USA, almost 15 years ago, transformed their military base in the encroached Cuban territory, in Guantanamo, into a concentration camp, holding a terrible history of arbitrary detentions, tortures and deaths. A few days upon Obama’s visit, the British newspaper, The Guardian (2016.03.28) mentioned that one of the actual prisoners in Guantanamo suffers from rectal prolepsis , as a result of the “ CIA agents’ practise, documented by the USA Senate, published in 2014, of inserting food (purée), into the prisoners anus”, a practice with the cynical designation of “rectal re-hydratation”. Three prisoners had poorer luck, having been beaten to death, in Guantanamo, on the 9th June 2006, an incident described in detail by the Harper’s magazine, March 2010. The North-American Guantanamo commander released a different explanation. Stating it concerned suicides by hanging, having classified those “suicides” as “an asymmetric act of war against us[!]. But the Saudi pathologists, which undergone independent autopsies, demanded by the families “verified that the [corporal] structure, the throat, the central object of the autopsy, had been removed” from the corpses ( in Harpers’, March 2010). It seems, the North-American authorities “under hired” tortures to their allies. According to the Guardian (2016.03.28), “the CIA took photos, of naked people, and sent them to be tortured by their foreign partners[…]. The explanation for such photos[…] was to protect the CIA from the legal or political consequences, in result of the brutal treatment under the hands of the partners’ intelligence”. As powerful do, servants are said to use their hands. As Obama assured, , “there exist disagreements” between the USA and the Cuban governments, concerning human rights.

Some ought to think whoever is in Guantanamo is for a reason, and might deserve all the suffering. But how to explain the British government decision in “paying million of pounds [!] for compensations to ex-prisoners of the military USA prison in Guantanamo” (in Reuters, 2015.11.10), and that accused the British government as a co-responsible for torture? A British newspaper therefore, explained: “ Ministers ought to have decided, under the opinion of the [British] intelligence, they could not risk the revealing in court, of thousand of documents on the models of British cooperation with the USA, concerning the so-called terrorism suspects extraordinary transfer” (in The Guardian, 2015.11.10). Another British paper (The Telegraph, 2011.04.25) wrote, based on documents revealed by the Wikileaks, that “ at least 150 innocent Afghani and Pakistani [held in Guantanamo] , including farmers, cooks and drivers, were caught or even sold to the USA forces [… and ] in many the cases “ there is no registration of any reason for the transfer”. Shaker Aamer, a Saudi prisoner, was released last October 2015, upon 13 years of detention, without having been judged nor even accused of any crime.

It is true Obama expressed his opinion against Guantanamo prison. He even promised to close it during the first year of his presidency. But his second mandate is coming to an end and Guantanamo carries on operating. During these eight years, human rights “made in USA”, were exported unto Libya, Syria, Honduras, Ukraine and other places. And for the regime media, whoever resists imperialism , deserves condemnation.