EP on Guantánamo Bay

A recent United Nations report on the United States detention centre in Guantánamo Bay stated what various human rights groups had been saying for a long time: that the conditions in the prison are below standard and the practices carried out there amount to torture, in clear violation of international human rights law, specifically the convention against torture.

In the wake of this UN report, British Prime Minister Tony Blair came under pressure to urge the US to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. One of his Cabinet ministers, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, told the BBC: "I would prefer that it wasn't there and I would prefer it was closed."

On February 16, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the Bush administration to close down the detention centre, which currently holds 500 persons suspected of terrorism. They have been held for four years in inhuman and degrading conditions amounting to torture.

In their resolution, adopted by 80 votes in favour to one against with one abstention, MEPs call on the US administration to close the detention facility there and insist that every prisoner should be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law and tried without delay in a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal. They condemn all forms of torture and ill treatment, and reiterate the need for the US to comply with international law.

The MEPs stressed that contemporary terrorism, particularly global terrorism directed against democracies and their populations, poses a threat to the basic and fundamental human rights our societies enjoy. They reiterated that the fight against terrorism, which is one of the priorities of the European Union and a key aspect of its external action, can only be successfully pursued if human rights and civil liberties are fully respected.

It should be noted here that the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay is just the tip of the iceberg. The US also operates detention facilities at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq and has been implicated in the use of secret detention facilities in other countries, also known as 'black sites'. Moreover, claims of rendition flights to countries where torture was practised have been found to be credible by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.

"Delayed" images from Abu Ghraib show the extent of the abuse that took place there. The images are, as the State Department's legal adviser put it, disgusting.

The war on terror will not be won by the violation of human rights but only through tactful actions in which the fundamental principles on which the US and the EU are based are respected - that of respect for the dignity of all mankind.

The US has another responsibility on its shoulders. Being the world's main superpower, its actions influence the actions of other governments. If it continues to allow torture and other inhuman and degrading treatment to occur under its jurisdiction, it would be encouraging other countries, with human rights records which leave a lot to be desired, the moral justification for continuing in their ways. This is the moral responsibility that the US administration should be keeping in mind.