January 11 is the 13th anniversary of the opening of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Nearly six years have passed since President Obama announced on his second day in office that he would shutter the detention center within one year. 127 detainees still remain at Guantanamo, 59 have been cleared for release, many for years. Over these 13 years, Guantanamo has been a black stain on America, a stain that Obama himself has acknowledged. Because of Guantanamo, people around the world have come to question the United States’ position as world leader in human rights and the rule of law.
Several times during his administration, Obama has said that he wanted to close Guantanamo. Although he has blamed the Republicans for placing restrictions on his ability to release the men, he has repeatedly signed legislation passed by Congress restricting release of the detainees. He cannot blame the Republicans. He has two more years to be true to his word and close the detention center. However, perhaps something is changing. Since Election Day, he has released 22 people. It took him three and one-half years (from May 2011 to November 2014) for him to release another 22 detainees.
However, it is easier said than done. Congress has continually prohibited detainees from being brought to the U.S. Until Obama can place the men who will be prosecuted, as well as those who are considered “forever” detainees, in prisons outside Guantanamo he cannot close the prison. If he does not close the prison, it is possible that the next president will be equally stymied, and that Guantanamo will only close when the last detainee has died.
The cursed spit of land they call Guantanamo has wrought misery, pain and suffering to the detainees, and to their families. The torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that they have suffered is both physical and psychological. Psychological abuse includes isolation, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation.
However, the Witness to Guantanamo project can document one situation where Guantanamo was not a curse, but a blessing. As Adil Hakimjan tells it, Guantanamo saved his life.
Adil is a Uyghur. The Uyghurs’ home is East Turkestan, known as Xinjiang in China. Its capital is Urumqi. The Chinese appropriated the Uyghur homeland mid-last century, approximately the same time it seized Tibet. Since then, the Chinese government has encouraged Han Chinese to move into Xinjiang. The Uyghurs, who are Muslims, are becoming a minority ethnic group, with limited rights and opportunities. China considers ethnic Uyghurs terrorists, and many have left to find a better life elsewhere.
Twenty-two Uyghurs, including Adil, were in Afghanistan and Pakistan when the twin towers and the Pentagon were attacked on 9/11. The Afghani and Pakistani officials rounded up the Uyghurs and sold them to the Americans for ransom. (In fact, over 80% of all people brought to Guantanamo had been purchased by the Americans for ransom.)
The Uyghurs were never a threat to America. However, because China labeled them as terrorists, the U.S. could not repatriate them to China, where they would have been tortured and executed. Instead, the U.S. sought to resettle the men elsewhere. In 2006, five Uyghurs were released to Albania.
One of them was Adil Hakimjan. Adil had a sister, Kauvser Hakimjan, who had left China for Pakistan because of its brutal birth-control policy. With the help of the U.N., she and her family found a new home in Sweden. After Adil arrived in Albania, he was able to obtain refugee status to be with his sister in Sweden. The Witness to Guantanamo project interviewed Adil in Stockholm in 2014.
During our interviews of former detainees, we often ask whether there was anything positive about being in Guantanamo. Adil told us something that no one had ever said before. Adil told us that Guantanamo “saved my life.”
He explained that if the United States had not purchased him from the Pakistanis, the Pakistanis, who are on good terms with the Chinese government, would have returned him to China, where he would have been brutalized, tortured and executed. Consequently, even though it was “difficult” in Guantanamo, Adil trusted that Allah “protected him” for his four and one-half years in Guantanamo and that “now I have a free life” in Sweden. He added that his friends and relatives had said to him, “You are very lucky, because you are in Guantanamo. You are being saved, and you are alive today. If you were not in Guantanamo, if you were in Pakistan [and then returned to China], you would have been gone by now.”
Originally posted on ACSblog
