All entries for Thursday 16 February 2006
February 16, 2006
Guantanamo Bay, the view UN got right.
Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4718724.stm
Its interesting to note how America is always on about Human Rights abuse in other countries, happily choosing to ignore similar situations in its own backyard.
Two of the prominent ones I can think of are the nuking of innocent Japanese and locking up prisoners in Guantanamo Bay without trial (let alone a fair one). I bring up the issue of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to highlight discrepancies in historical records. Where many americans to this day claim that the bombing of Japan was the difinitive end to WWII, BBC has released a documentary in which it has shown how the bombs were completely unnecessary and were only used by the US administration to show the world that they were indeed the superpower everyone made them out to be. In fact it goes on to claim that Japan had indicated many times to surrender, but US chose to ignore those signals completely. Whether the unneccessary loss of 360,000 innocent people was just a ploy to showcase its military strengths or not, in no way can such a huge loss ever be justified and must be condemned forever.
The issue with Guantanamo Bay although not similar, is just another way in which US is unnecessarily exploiting its military prowess for inhumane means. It is a plot of land owned by US (thanks to Castro) in Cuba. The US has been usig it as a place for detaining anyone it sees as a threat. This includes 12 year old Afghani children, I don't know how a 12 year old child sitting in Afghanistan is capable of blowing up America, but apparently he is. Now just as in Abu Ghrain with the British and US troops abusing Iraqi soldiers, there is not less torture in Guantanamo Bay. I quote from the U.N. report "The report expresses concern at the use of excessive force during transportation and force-feeding through nasal tubes during hunger strikes, which it says amounts to torture." These people are not even allowed to die in peace. The US refuses to to investigate any allegations, it refuses to give any prisoner a free trial and it refuses to ovey the Geneva convention. This is a country that lauds itself on its spick and span Human Rights record, it accuses nations such as China of Human Rights abuse regularly and fails to consider its own atrocities. Shame on you America.