 "Photo: Brennan Linsley / The Associated Press")
It's amazing how the same country that holds firmly to the belief of "innocent until proven guilty" is the same country that, according to reports from the United Nations, has held more than 450 detainees in Guantanamo Bay without charge.
Let's face the facts. Most of those detainees don't know where Osama bin Laden is and many are neither linked to the Taliban or al-Qaida. What's even sadder is that these people are being held not knowing when or if they will be released. They are also being tortured in the process.
I recently saw a documentary called "The Road to Guantanamo" that showed the true story of four British Muslims who went to Pakistan for a wedding only to end up in Guantanamo Bay. And during their four-year stay, they were tortured, abused and humiliated only to finally be released because "they got the wrong guys."
There have been numerous reports from the detainees and reporters not only of physical torture but psychological torture such as putting them in isolation cells, putting them in extremely cold rooms with blaring loud music and having detainees stripped of their clothes.
The United Nations called on the United States to immediately close down the detention center and to either release its inmates or to bring them before an impartial tribunal. Now after much criticism the Bush administration wants to pull out of Guantanamo Bay and shift the responsibility to other nations. President Bush defended the camp as being a necessary part of the war against terror.
The problem with that is that many of them aren't terrorists. Bush uses the War on Terror to justify all the injustices being done. He uses the War on Terror to justify going to war with a country that had no nuclear weapons and quite frankly was never a threat to the United States. Of course there are now insurgencies that never would have happened if we hadn't gone to war in the first place. So now he justifies the war all under the pretense of "terror."
The Patriot Act is just one of the many examples of unfair treatment done in the name of war. And the result is the racial profiling of those of Middle-Eastern decent as being "terrorists."
Muslims and Arabs, however, are not the only ones getting racially profiled. Nicolaus Nassar - a Catholic and an American - says that every time he and his family go to the airport they have special security procedures done to them. He said, "It's because my last name is Nassar - a last name from Lebanon."
Nassar said he believes the American government has taken things too far.
"Many people don't think the Patriot Act is a big deal," he said. "[But] they don't understand that racial profiling hurts everyone."
If this country wants to pride itself on the principle of democracy and freedom, then it should listen to the majority of the world and free the detainees.
The Bush administration has made Guantanamo a place where due process does not exist. It's a place where people can serve life imprisonments without ever going to a court or ever being charged, let alone tried, or ever even seeing a lawyer.
The reality is that these people are being detained for looking like "terrorists." A lot of these soldiers who are in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are soldiers who enlisted in the army right out of high school, many of whom never went to school with Muslims.
They see the big beards, folded pants and a Quran, and their natural reaction is to think these people are extremists.
It's time to educate ourselves about different cultures and about what is going on in the rest of the world. To most of us, these events do not directly affect our everyday lives. But how fair is that to the detainees' family members and their loved ones?
The only way we can establish justice and peace on this earth is if we practice it ourselves. Time is limited; we must voice our concerns and not forget about the many innocent civilians who are being imprisoned and mistreated every day.
----- Contact Shirien Elmasraya at selmasraya@lsureveille.com
Be the first to comment on this article!