Embarrassed by Gitmo

The Mauritanian (2021) is a powerful movie. After watching it last month, I felt the need to write something about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, often referred to as Gitmo. What has gone on there is an embarrassment to me and many like-minded USAmericans. 

What is Gitmo?

Guantánamo is a bay on the southeast side of Cuba. In 1903, after the Spanish-American War in 1898 that resulted in the independence of Cuba, the U.S. leased 45 square miles of the outer harbor of the bay and established a naval base there.

The U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has existed ever since its inception, but in January 2002, following the 9/11/01 attacks on the U.S., the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was opened as a military prison. Since that time, 780 men have been detained there.

Most of the detainees—and that term is used, rather than prisoners—have been transferred elsewhere, and with the release of a Moroccan man last month there are only 39 there now.

The detention camp, which is popularly referred to as simply Guantanamo or Gitmo, or even just GTMO, has for years now been the target of intense criticism by human rights groups because of the use of torture and indefinite detention without trial.

The cost of Gitmo is also astounding. In June of this year, the Friends Committee on National Legislation reported that it costs $13 million per year to hold each detainee at Guantánamo.

Who is the Mauritanian?

Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born in the West African country of Mauritania in 1970. He was detained without charge in Gitmo for fourteen years (from 2002 to 2016) and also tortured in his early years there. 

In the summer and early fall of 2005, Slahi handwrote a 466-page, 122,000-word draft of his memoirs in his single-cell segregation hut in Guantánamo. That manuscript was finally published with extensive redactions in 2015, and then a restored reversion (without redactions) was issued in 2017.

The Mauritanian, the movie, stars Tahar Rahim as Slahi and Jodie Foster as the American lawyer seeking his release. Slahi’s book was originally titled Guantánamo Diary, but since the movie was released, it is now being sold under the title The Mauritanian—and my local library has the Kindle edition.

To learn more, and current, information about Slahi, see this Wikipedia article.

Why is Gitmo an Embarrassment?

As early as 2005, CBS News reported that Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee’s senior Democrat, called the detention center “an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security.”

Amnesty International has long been a severe critic of Gitmo, and early this year they published a long appeal (more than 50 pages) calling on the U.S. government to close Gitmo—as Pres. Obama pledged to do but was unable to because of Republican opposition.

Amnesty clearly declares, “The military prison at Guantánamo Bay represents grave violations of human rights by the U.S. government.” That charge should be an embarrassment to all of us who are U.S. citizens.

As one who long identified as a “white evangelical,” I am also embarrassed by this: “Close to six-in-ten white evangelicals in the South say that torture can often (20%) or sometimes (37%) be justified in order to gain important information.”

That statement from a 2008 Pew Research Center poll, is included in Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul, a 2010 book edited by David P. Gushee, who also long identified as an evangelical but who was also adamantly opposed to torture.

Chapter 4 of that book is Gushee’s, and it is titled “What the Torture Debate Reveals about American Christianity.” There are four authors of the next chapter, Guantánamo: An Assessment and Reflections from Those Who Have Been There.”

I fully agree with Dr. Gushee and the other contributors to his book, with Amnesty International, and with Pres. Obama’s attempt to close Gitmo, and I ask you to join me in signing this appeal by Amnesty International. (To learn more about Gitmo, click on this website of Human Rights First.)