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.)
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