Guantanamo : From Gitmo With Love - by Emily Witt
The United Nations and many of America's closest allies — including the United Kingdom — have called for Guantanamo's closure, complaining of inhumane treatment and the suspension of fundamental legal rights. But you'd never know it from visiting the base. If ten days at the camp teaches you anything, it's a lesson on acting like nothing is wrong.
Under the pretense of protecting you, just a 100 miles away from Florida , the US government has imprisoned 460 men in metal cages, communal barracks, and concrete cells. Surrounded by concentric chainlink fences topped with concertina wire, they fall asleep under dimmed fluorescent lights. They are dressed in orange, beige, or white: the Guantanamo Bay color spectrum that distinguishes bad behavior from compliance with prison rules. Rotating shifts of 300 vigilant guards in desert camouflage keep watch.In recent weeks, this epicenter of the war on terrorism, 400 miles southeast of Miami, has reached a crisis point. As the camp's population has dwindled from more than 700 to about 460 detainees, frustration and anger among those left behind appears to have increased. The morning of May 18, three detainees attempted suicide by ingesting large doses of antianxiety medicine. That evening, a fourth staged a suicide ruse in a communal barrack. When guards entered the bay to investigate, ten detainees wielding improvised weapons of fan blades and broken fluorescent lights pounced en masse. Just a few days ago, a Guantanamo spokesman announced 89 prisoners were on a hunger strike.
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