Aerial view of Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay (abbreviated as GTMO or "Gitmo") is located at the south-eastern end of Cuba, in the Guantánamo Province, and contains a United States Naval Base (116 km²).

History

The base was established in 1898 when the U.S. obtained control of Cuba from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War. The U.S. government obtained a perpetual lease for the base on February 23, 1903 from the newly independent Cuban state. As of 2004, it is still occupied by the U.S., which continues to adhere to the lease terms. The lease was arranged through two agreements signed in 1902 and 1903, and a treaty of 1934. The lease terms hold the U.S., for the purposes of operating coaling and naval stations, has "complete jurisdiction and control" of the area, while the Republic of Cuba is recognized to retain ultimate sovereignty. The agreement holds further that the U.S. will pay 2,000 gold coins (more than $4,000 in today's money) each year in rent.

Since coming to power, Fidel Castro has only cashed one rent check but steadfastly refuses to cash the others because he views the base as illegitimate. Although diplomatic relations do not exist between the U.S. and Communist Cuba, the U.S. has agreed to return fugitives from Cuban law to Cuban authorities and Cuba agreed to return fugitives from U.S. law, for offenses committed in Guantanamo Bay, to U.S. authorities.

The U.S. control of this Cuban territory has never been popular with Cubans. The Cuban government strongly denounces the treaty on grounds that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 declares in its article 52 that a treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force—in this case by the inclusion, in 1903, of the Platt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban Convention was warned not to modify the Amendment and was told that the U.S. troops would not leave Cuba until its terms had been adopted as a condition from U.S. to grant independence.

The Cuban government cut off water to the base, causing the United States to first import water from Jamaica and then to build desalination plants. Less than a handful of Cubans, all elderly, still cross the base's North East Gate daily to work on the base; but the Cuban government does not allow new recruitment.

In fiction, Guantanamo Bay was the setting for the movie A Few Good Men and was also featured in Bad Boys II.

Detention of prisoners

Beginning in 2002, a small portion of the base has been used to house suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere at Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta and Camp Echo, and has also been used in the past to house Cuban and Haitian refugees who have been intercepted on the high seas. The peculiar legal status of Guantanamo Bay was a factor in these uses. Because sovereignty of Guantanamo Bay ultimately resides with Cuba, the U.S. government has argued and one circuit court has agreed that people detained at Guantanamo are legally outside of the U.S. and do not have the Constitutional rights that they would have if they were held on U.S. territory (see Cuban American Bar Ass'n, Inc. v. Christopher, 43 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1995)). However, in 2004, the Supreme Court rejected this argument in the case Rasul v. Bush with the majority decision and ruled that prisoners in Guantanamo have access to American courts, citing the fact that the U.S. has exclusive control over Guantanamo Bay.

The U.S. has classified the prisoners held at Camp Delta and Camp Echo as illegal combatants. This grants them the rights of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as opposed to the more common Third Geneva Convention which deals exclusively with prisoners of war.

Three British prisoners released in 2004 without charge have alleged that there is ongoing torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution being committed by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay and have released a 115-page dossier detailing these accusations [1] (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/guan-a06.shtml). They also accuse British authorities of knowing about the torture and failing to respond. Their accounts have been backed up by two former French prisoners and a former Swedish prisoner. US Navy Secretary Gordon England has claimed that a Navy inspector general has performed a review of the practices at Guantanamo and concluded that it was "being operated at very high standards."

See also

Compare with other foreign establishments: Subic Bay, Panama Canal Zone

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External links

• U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay website (http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/)
• Texts of United States - Cuban agreements and treaty of 1934 (http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_-_Cuban_Agreements_and_Treaty_of_1934)
• Statement by The Government of Cuba to the National and International Public Opinion (http://hometown.aol.com/webcuba/guantanamoeng1.html)
• An Op-Ed Column criticizing the use of military tribunals to try "illegal combatants" (http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2001-12-12/rant.html)
• Web site dedicated to criticizing U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay (http://www.guantanamo.com/)