[Ppnews] Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern11262008.html
November 26, 2008


Where Aliens Have No Unalienable Rights


Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

By RAY McGOVERN

"There is no right to due process for an alien 
who is not here," insisted the 44th Solicitor 
General of the United States, Gregory G. Garre, 
proudly representing the President of the United 
States. Garre is a teacher of the law, you see, 
and was attempting to show a three-judge panel of 
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 
why one of their colleagues had overreached.

Garre claimed that U.S. District Judge Ricardo 
Urbina had exceeded his authority on Oct. 7, 2008 
in ordering that 17 men held in Guantanamo for 
almost seven years be brought to his court for a 
fair hearing on the modalities of their release. 
Urbina wanted government lawyers to face the 17 
prisoners and present the government's argument 
as to why they should remain in detention.

"Aliens have no rights," Garre kept repeating. 
And they REALLY have no rights, he seemed to be 
saying, if they are "not physically in the United States."

And that, of course, was precisely the reason 
former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his 
clever band of Mafia lawyers wanted to keep such 
"aliens" offshore in the prison created at the 
U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Garre was 
determined to prevent their feet from "touching 
our soil," as he put it, on the chance they might 
then persuade some judge to let them appear before an impartial court.

NON-Enemy-Combatants

Never mind that the detainees had been deemed 
NON-enemy-combatants; never mind that the U.S. 
government had already conceded that, despite 
initial suspicions that they were terrorists, the 
U.S. government could adduce no evidence to support that accusation.

Never mind that they had been unlawfully 
incarcerated for almost seven years. Garre spoke 
of "unlimited Executive power" in these matters. 
He kept insisting, "We have the authority to 
detain them." Garre added that the Justice 
Department had tried hard to find a country willing to accept them but failed.

The unfounded suspicion of terrorism, for which 
the U.S. was responsible, did not make them 
attractive candidates for immigration. And 
besides, no country wanted to risk antagonizing China.

You see, these prisoners are Uighurs, a Turkic 
people of Central Asia, five million of whom live 
in China's northwestern province of Xinjiang. The 
Han Chinese have suppressed the Uighurs, their 
culture, and their strong sense of nationalism 
for decades. The Chinese government is fond of 
referring to Uighur nationalists as "terrorists," 
and has been pleased to use the U.S.-led global 
"war on terrorism" as an additional pretext to suppress them.

An ancient and gifted people, Uighurs (WEE'-gurz) 
created a "Uighur empire" that stretched from the 
Caspian Sea to Manchuria and lasted from 744 to 
840 CE. They considered trying to conquer China, 
but chose instead an exploitative trade policy to 
drain off its wealth into Uighur coffers.

Compared to Europeans of the time, Uighurs were 
considerably more advanced. Documents show, for 
example, that a Uighur farmer could write down a 
contract, using legal terminology. Some western 
scholars contend that acupuncture was not a 
Chinese, but rather a Uighur discovery. Famine 
and civil war brought down the Uighur empire in 
the middle of the 9th century, and they were then 
overrun by other central Asian peoples.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

So how did Uighurs get to Guantanamo? Fleeing 
Chinese oppression, many Uighurs found their way 
to Afghanistan where they were living in a 
self-contained camp when the U.S. attacked in 
October 2001. They were captured in the wake of 
the fighting, many of them by Pakistani bounty 
hunters who proceeded to sell them to U.S. 
forces. Twenty-two Uighurs ended up in 
Guantanamo, joining others with the undeserved 
Rumsfeldian sobriquet "the worst of the worst."

After "interviewing" them extensively, by late 
2003 U.S. interrogators had concluded that few, 
if any, were a threat. Under international law, 
the only country required to accept displaced 
persons is their country of origin. But China had 
been making a practice of incarcerating Uighurs 
with little if any proof of any involvement in 
violent acts. The Uighurs in Guantanamo did not 
want to trade one prison for another. No third 
country, however, would accept them­except 
Albania, which welcomed five in 2006.

Some American judges have agreed with the two 
senior U.N. investigators, who have said that, 
under international law, the U.S. must 
immediately release the Uighur detainees. In Dec. 
2005 District Judge James Robertson ruled 
unequivocally in favor of releasing the Uighurs, 
asserting, "This indefinite imprisonment at 
Guantanamo Bay is unlawful." He wanted them 
released in the U.S., but ended up deciding that 
existing law did not give him "the power to do 
what I believe justice requires."

It was not until almost three years later that 
Judge Ricardo Urbina, on Oct. 7, 2008 took the 
bull by the horns and ordered the 17 Uighurs 
brought to the Washington, D.C. area where local 
Uighur families were prepared to shelter them, 
and Lutheran churches were eager to assist in the 
resettlement process. But U.S. government lawyers 
appealed, arguing that letting them come to the 
U.S. would set a bad precedent with respect to 
others still held at Guantanamo, and the appeals court stayed Urbina's order.

On Monday morning a three-judge appeals court met 
to hear arguments as to whether or not Urbina's 
decision should be overturned. Judge Judith W. 
Rogers, appointed by President Bill Clinton, had 
objected strongly to the stay, pointing out, "The 
government can point to no evidence of 
dangerousness" from the Uighurs. On Monday, she 
subjected Barre to strong questioning. Her 
colleagues Karen Henderson and A. Raymond 
Randolph, both appointed by President George H. 
W. Bush, seemed much more sympathetic to the 
government's position that the Uighurs should not 
set foot in the United States.

It was the tone of the Solicitor General's 
argument that hit me strongest. Here is an 
unmitigated tragedy for which the U.S. (together 
with Pakistani bounty hunters) is responsible. 
Small wonder that on Oct. 7, Judge Urbina 
shouted, "Enough. Six-plus years is enough. Bring 
them here and let the government defend its extraordinary position."

There has been no information on what the 
three-judge panel that met on Monday will 
eventually decide, or when. It may take weeks, we were told.

Meanwhile? For the Uighurs, more languishing in 
Guantanamo. Don't be overly concerned, though, 
said Barre. He told the court that they had been 
moved to a "less restrictive part of the prison 
in Guantanamo, where there are amenities like DVD players." (sic)

Aliens Have No Unalienable Rights?

I thought the Declaration of Independence was 
what we were all about as Americans:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 
all men are created equal, that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, 
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
"

Where does it say "except for Uighur aliens?"

When we were a younger country and much closer to 
our roots, France decided to mark the centenary 
of the Declaration of Independence by giving us 
the Statue of Liberty to watch over the streams 
of immigrants coming to our shores. Aliens like 
my grandparents were not turned back­so long as 
they were found to be sound of body. The statue 
was not actually emplaced until October 1886, 
less than two years before my grandparents arrived in New York from Ireland.

My grandparents were aliens­but fortunate ones. 
They could go to Liberty Island; they could read 
Emma Lazarus' sonnet and rejoice at the words:

"
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Guantanamo An Abomination

Maybe we need to pause this Thanksgiving. The 
Uighur prisoners should be at table with us, not 
in confinement watching DVDs. What has happened to us? Have we lost our soul?

Guantanamo is an abomination­a violation of the 
spirit and letter of the Constitution bequeathed 
to us and to our children. A negation of the 
Judeo-Christian heritage many of us claim. It could hardly be clearer:

"You shall not violate the rights of the alien." (Deuteronomy 24:17)

My friend and mentor, Dean Brackley, S.J., 
distilled the Bible, long before he left for El 
Salvador to take the place of one of his brother 
Jesuits slain in November 1989, into this observation:

"It all depends on who you think God is, and how 
God feels when little people get pushed around."

Thanksgiving?

Yes, there is still much to celebrate this Thanksgiving.

A new president-elect, a lawyer with a sense of 
justice­and a new beginning. A person who not 
only claims to be, but also seems, so far, to be 
what he claims­a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, 
who was tough on hypocrisy: "How terrible for you 
teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites
" (Matthew 23: 13ff)

What we can be grateful for is a Constitution 
that provides for a change in government on a 
periodic basis, so that even when a president is 
allowed by cowardly politicians to ignore that 
precious gift of our Founders and amass king-like 
power, he can be dethroned by vote of the people.

We can be thankful for Barack Obama's pledge to 
close the Guantanamo prison, and for the fact 
that we are free to keep pressing him to proclaim 
liberty to captives and set free the 
oppressed­including, of course, Uighurs and others in similar circumstances.

As the National Lawyers Guild has urged, Obama 
must ensure that all prisoners at Guantanamo are 
released, repatriated, resettled, or (if there is 
probable cause to believe any have committed a 
crime) brought to trial, in strict accordance 
with international and national law, and the 
principles of fundamental justice regarding criminal proceedings.

I would add the suggestion that we as a country 
make an open apology and ask the rest of the 
world for forgiveness for our straying so far 
from the ideals upon which our country was 
founded. Then there can be true thanksgiving for 
real closure, and an end to a particularly 
disgraceful chapter in our country's history.

And then we shall ALL be set free­not only the Uighurs.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the 
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the 
Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC.  He is on 
the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence 
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a 
contributor to 
<http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html>Imperial 
Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, 
edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. 
Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: 
<mailto:rrmcgovern at aol.com>rrmcgovern at aol.com

This article was originally posted on Consortiumnews.com.




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