U.S.-bound Cubans held at Guantanamo

[sabra]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/08/15/gitmo.cubans/index.html

U.S.-bound Cubans held at Guantanamo

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- About 50 Cuban migrants are being detained indefinitely at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to an exile group in Miami.

Federal officials Tuesday confirmed the number.

One migrant has been held for nearly two years; another, age 10, has diabetes.

The Cubans were picked up at sea at various times trying to reach the United States, according to the exile group, Democracy Movement.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. I have finally figured it out:

Using Gitmo gives the maladministration wood. That's the only possible explanation.

[saigon68]

7. I believe that Cheney is sexually aroused at the thought of torture

[Solly Mack]

2. I always assumed this was happening

I get a numb feeling when I think about America getting away with her crimes. How am I supposed to see America as anything but a war crime nation unless the guilty are held accountable? I am not going to be able to rationalize this away. I won't be telling myself 20 years from now that America was going through a crazy period but that's all behind us now ...as if that changes anything or makes it better...the guilty, all the guilty, must be held accountable...then and only then, will I be able to see America has something other than a war crime nation.

Until then I'll think "America" and feel numb.

[Say_What]

6. The Nation (2003): The Legacy of Guantánamo

Annette Baptiste* still cries when she thinks about what the United States did to her ten years ago on its Naval Base in Guantánamo, Cuba. Sitting in her Brooklyn apartment, she recalls how the United States detained her and 276 fellow Haitians in the Alcatraz of refugee camps, imprisoning them for some eighteen months simply because they, or their loved ones, had HIV. "I relive Guantánamo every day," she says in Creole. "It's all in my head."

Guantánamo is also in Pierre Avril's* head, say the friends who looked after him in the United States. Avril was just 14 when he arrived at Guantánamo, and the trauma of the experience--the fear, the uncertainty, the stigma--left permanent damage. Today he is once again in detention, this time in a psychiatric correctional facility in upstate New York.

Joel Saintil* never even had the luxury of post-traumatic stress. He died just days after he was freed from the camp, at the age of 26. For months, human rights attorneys had begged the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to send Saintil and other gravely ill Haitians for treatment in the United States, but the agency had refused until a federal district court judge ordered the sickest released. Saintil was flown to his father's house in Florida, but it was already too late. He became one of the camp's first casualties.

This June marked the tenth anniversary of the closing of the Guantánamo HIV Camp, one of the world's first, and only, detention centers for people with HIV/AIDS. Today the story is all but forgotten, but at the time it captured people's conscience, and its demise made headlines.


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030721/ratner

[Solly Mack]

10. I remember - that's part of the reason I automatically assume

that more people than we are told about are being held at GTMO.

[wellst0nev0ter]

3. So Much For Holding "The Worst Of The Worst"

shut that god-forsaken place down NOW!!!!

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. They are holding a 10 year old?

Where are all the Cuban Elian lovers?

[Mika]

5. They are not being held in cells.

The US has built dorms for them. They are not prisoners. They just don't qualify for entry into the US because they didn't touch US shores when picked up, so the US wet foot/dry foot didn't apply to them.

Still, these Cubans didn't qualify for (or maybe didn't apply for) a legal US immigration visa. Bush's new policy will allow any and all Cubans picked up at sea to be brought to the US and released.. even if they are convicted criminals who failed a legal US immigration visa application. Murders, felons, rapists, etc..

The US wet foot/dry foot already allows for these types of criminals from Cuba to be released into the US general population (Miami 99.9% of the time) if they touch US shores via a smuggling op or raft. then they receive mega benefits, for Cubans only, that no other immigrant nor even native born Americans can get.

Nice policy, huh?


And the Cubaphobes constantly mewl the question 'why do Cubans "escape" Cuba to the US by rafts then?'.

[donsu]

9. held in a cell or held in a dorm is still being HELD against their will

(this is not against your post, just commenting on 'Held')

[donsu]

8. before this thread I never knew Gitmo was an AIDs prison

and how mind bending is it that if Cubans float ashore in america they get to stay but if they get caught floating some of them, including children, get confined in Gitmo!

what insanity.

freedom fighters should liberate Gitmo and destroy the infrastructure.

freedom fighters should also liberate our White House.