The New York Times reports a unanimous ruling yesterday in the DC Court of Appeals by a panel made up of Judges David B. Sentelle, Merrick B. Garland, and Thomas B. Griffith (appointed by Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II, respectively):
In the first civilian judicial review of the government’s evidence for holding any of the Guantánamo Bay detainees, a federal appeals court has ordered that one of them be released or given a new military hearing.
The ruling, made known Monday in a notice from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, overturned a Pentagon tribunal’s decision in the case of one of 17 Guantánamo detainees who are ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim minority from western China.
The imprisonment of the 17 Uighurs (pronounced WEE-goors) has drawn wide attention because of their claim that although they were in Afghanistan when the United States invaded in 2001, they were never enemies of this country and were mistakenly swept into Guantánamo.
The court’s decision was a new setback for the Bush administration, which has suffered a string of judicial defeats on Guantánamo policy, most recently in a Supreme Court ruling on June 12 that dealt with a separate issue of detainee rights. The Uighur case was argued long before that ruling by the justices.
The one-paragraph notice from the appeals court said a three-judge panel had found in favor of Huzaifa Parhat, a former fruit peddler who made his way from western China to a Uighur camp in Afghanistan.
‘The court directed the government to release or to transfer Parhat, or to expeditiously hold a new tribunal,’ the notice said. It said the court had found ‘invalid’ the military’s decision that he was an enemy combatant. …
As I’ve told you (and you can probably tell from her comments here anyhow), my friend Mary is more knowledgeable about the recent history of Guantánamo — and certainly about the Uighurs held there — than anyone I know. This morning, she wrote:
Rummaging through links and info I missed earlier, here’s some testimony from [Huzaifa Parhat's attorney] Sabin Willet back in May to Congress.
http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/wil052008.htm
One of the first things I saw about GITMO detainees that really grabbed my attention was written by him. I have a little affinity because, like I was, he is a commercial creditor’s rights lawyer, who pretty much fell into his representation of the Chinese Uighurs at GITMO.
I am a lawyer from Boston. At Bingham McCutchen LLP, most of our clients are America’s corporate mainstream: banks, bondholders and businesses. But we also represent Uighur prisoners at Guantanamo. I do this work for a simple reason. When I go to see my clients in the Guantanamo prison, I have to walk beneath my flag.
This subcommittee has already heard about the Uighur dissidents from Communist China who were caught up in the so-called War on Terror. This Spring you read reports from China’s state news agency describing Tibetan monks as ‘terrorists.’ That is the word the Communists have used for the Uighurs too. Ever since 9/11.
One of my clients is Huzaifa Parhat. He’s never been charged with anything. He never will be. In fact, he’s been cleared for release for years. Two weeks ago he began his seventh year at Guantanamo.
He believes in freedom of worship and denounces state-enforced abortion. He doesn’t care for communism. In China, beliefs like Huzaifa’s are called ‘intellectual terrorism.’ Uighurs are regularly tortured for it. Some are put to death. I can remember when we Americans admired people who stood up for such beliefs in the face of tyranny. Now we offer them — what do they call it? — a ‘single occupancy’ cell in Camp Six.
When did we become such a small people?
Huzaifa lives in a place called Camp Six. My information, which dates from March, is that all the Uighurs but one are kept there. The men call it the dungeon above the ground. Each lives alone in an isolation cell. There is no natural light or air. There is no way to tell whether it is day or night. Outside the cell is a noisy bedlam of banging doors and the indistinct shouts of desperate men crouching at door cracks. A mad-house. Inside the cell, nothing.
Mr. Chairman, can you remember the last time you were alone — I mean really alone? Nothing to read, no phone, music, computer, television, radio, activity; no companion, no one to talk to.
Weeks go by during which he never sees the sun at all. Mr. Chairman, you try talking to a man who only wants to see the sun. You will never forget the experience.
In the cell he can crouch at the door, and yell through the crack at the bottom. The fellow in the next cell may respond, or he might be curled in the fetal position, staring at the wall. Another Uighur told us of the voices in his head. The voices were getting the better of him. His foot was tapping on the floor. I don’t know what’s happened to him: he doesn’t come out of the cell to see us any more.
A letter from a third was released last December. He wondered, did someone need to commit suicide before anyone notices? A friend has a client who used to be thought of by the command as a model prisoner, well grounded, level headed. Now he has lost hope; he has lost control; he seethes with anger. His mind is wrecked by isolation.
Huzaifa believes he will die in Guantanamo. Last year he asked us to pass a message to his wife that she should remarry.
The Uighurs are not the enemy. Under Article I of our Constitution, Mr. Chairman, you in Congress, and you in Congress alone, have the power to name the enemy. The President is the chief general and admiral, but you are the ‘deciders.’ It is your job to say who the enemy is; his to snap a salute. And you never declared war on the Uighurs. Nor on ‘terror,’ for that matter.
But suppose, for a moment, that the Uighurs were the enemy. Would you leave them in Camp Six? In a prison? In isolation? Not if you’ve read the service Field Manuals. Not if you were Generals Ridgway, Westmoreland, Schwartzkopf or Powell, you wouldn’t. Yet this afternoon in Camp Six, we Americans are applying the same isolation techniques that North Korea used on our own airmen in 1952. The cells are shinier, and the paint fresher, but the cruel destruction of the human soul is the same. In 1952, our ambassador went to the General Assembly of the United Nations to denounce this kind of thing as barbaric. How quaint of him.
Have the Uighurs boiled over, in their seventh year? Five years after being told they were innocent and would be released? Would I boil over? Would you?
The Uighurs — those who will still see me — nod politely when I tell them about the courts. But they long ago concluded that American courts are merely a debating society. Nothing ever comes of them. A sign at Guantanamo says, ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.’ It would take a better advocate than me to persuade the Uighurs we Americans are serious about that.
Mr. Chairman, what will you do about Guantanamo? You have fifty or sixty stateless people there cleared for release. That is, for freedom. Are we Americans honor bound to defend that value, or are we just talking? The rest of the world won’t take them unless we take some too. Will you make that happen?
That will take some gumption. The administration’s propaganda is effective, and most of your constituents think that anyone at Guantanamo must be a terrorist. But our flag asks a little gumption of us sometimes. Generally where the Congress shows the courage of leadership, the people come around. This seems like the right time for it.
Because outside, the world is turning. My client’s wife has remarried. Inside the wire, nothing ever changes. Huzaifa Parhat has been a prisoner at Guantanamo from the attack on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, straight through to the signing of the surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and almost back again. He’s in his cell in Camp Six this afternoon.
So forgive me for being pissed off at every member of Congress who has sat back for years and done nothing – nothing other than ratcheting up efforts to take away habeas, from the Detainee Treatment Act through the Military Commissions Act.
And as for Willet’s client, he’s in his cell today as well.
“….their claim that although they were in Afghanistan when the United States invaded in 2001, they were never enemies of this country and were mistakenly swept into Guantánamo.”
I ask the following questions that beg to be asked, despite the risk of vilification by simply asking. Boldly, I go forward anyway.
IF they are from China, then what WERE they doing in Afghanistan? I don’t think our invasion plan was a secret. Surely they knew the US was planning the invasion / attack. And thus, even with this knowledge, they voluntarily chose to be in Afghanistan, close enough to the War front to be “mistakenly swept” into custody by US forces? Must have been some damned important business in Afghanistan — some righteous motivation. For instance, IF I knew that Mexico was about to be invaded and attacked by Venezuela (hypothetical), I sure as hell would avoid traveling into Mexico, if possible.
Were any of them armed? IF so, why?
Did any of them shoot at or kill any of our troops? If so, why?
Were any of them aiding or helping in any way any of the Taliban or other resistance fighters against the invading US troops?
These are just a few questions for Mary (or anyone else with knowledge), just for starters.
“The rest of the world won’t take them unless we take some too. Will you make that happen?
– ¦
That will take some gumption. The administration’s propaganda is effective, and most of your constituents think that anyone at Guantanamo must be a terrorist. ”
This quote gives me pause. Why won’t any other country take them? What about their own country —China? How could US propaganda be “effective” if we have lost our stature and honor with the rest of the world as some proclaim? It would seem just the opposite should be true —other countries should be lining up to take in these harmless folks who have been mistreated by the US. Something just doesn’t add up about this story.
afotl, I’m trying to hunt up Mary for you, but I can quickly answer the “why not China?” question: China would be DEElighted to take them — and promptly execute them. Mary can confirm the rest of this better than I, but they were strictly non-combatants, sheltering in a Muslim country from persecution in China and NOT helping the Taliban in any way. You need to read the NYT story, for starters.
From the NYT’s article: “The government asserted that the Uighurs had been at a training camp that, the government said, was associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Mr. Parhat’s lawyers, on the other hand, noted that at his Guantánamo hearing, he explained that he had left China to fight for Uighur independence. ”
The position of the US and the position of Parhats lawyers are NOT mutually exclusive. They could both be true. And if they were WITH the Taliban and Al Qaeda at a training camp when our troops invaded Afghanistan, then it is not really that difficult to understand why they would have been taken into custody. The reasonable presumption would be that they are with these two groups. It matters not that their motivation was to join with these groups to fight China, as opposed to the US. IF they wanted to be out of harm’s way, they should have gotten the hell out of Afghanistan. Certainly, hanging out with those two groups —the ones responsible for 9/11 and who the US was targeting during the attack — was not very smart IF they were indeed “innocent” bystanders. Could they not have “sheltered” somewhere else in Afghanistan, with other people not associated with Al Qaeda or the Taliban?
Other questions. Have these “innocent” freedom fighters used Al Qaeda and Taliban tactics in their fighting, killing women, children and other non-combatants in terrorist strikes? Cutting off the heads of people? Attacking schools, religious locations, shopping centers, markets? Setting off roadside IEDs? IF so, then they are indeed “terrorists”.
My notions of what it takes to be bold are very different than making a blog post, afotl, and that may be why we aren’t communicating very well.
I’m no expert on the Uighurs or the lawsuits – just have access to what is pretty readily available if someone wanted to research.
Q Why were the Uighurs in Afghanistan?
A Different answers for different individuals, but in general they were there to escape persecution in China. The Uighurs are Turkic and, similar to the ethnic Kurds in Turkey and Iraq who would like to see their historic Kurdistan re-established; the Uighurs would like to see their lands in Northwest China become East Turkistan. Like the Kurds engaged in skirmishes with Hussein (and later sided with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war) the Uighurs do engage in skirmishes with the Chinese govt.
The US has long considered Uighurs to be victims of persecution in China and has allowed quite a few into the US. Prior to 9/11, the US State Dept and even Chinese communiques referred to the Uighurs as “dissidents.” After 9/11, China took the opportunity to recharacterize the Uighurs, like many Tibetan groups including the monks there, as “terrorists.”
The area is very poor and since the Uighurs are ethnically not Chinese and are also Muslims and devout anti-communists (remember the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan- go watch Charlie Wilson’s war) they do not get much assistance and are often victimized. With their ethnic and religious affiliations and with the Turkish economy being much better than their own, many try to get access to Turkey (like many Mexican workers trying to get into the US) and the mountainous areas in Afghanistan have pockets of them at any given time, waiting to get back.
So some Uighurs did attend weapons training camps (like the ones that the American govt helped support prior to the Bosnian conflict) in mountainous parts of Afghanistan. Camps tended to be under affilations and alliances with local warlords. Almost all were also trying to get into Turkey and simultaneously hide from China, so they clung to the mountains in Afghanistan.
NotaQbutanAssumption: How could the US forces be sweeping up these people if they weren’t terrorists?
A. Most of the hundreds who have gone through the doors at GITMO (as opposed to the thousands and thousands sent to Abu Ghraib and Cropper etc.) were not swept up by US forces. As has been summarized from the records by the work of very dedicated students at Seton Hall, only 5% of the detainees at GITMO were captured by US forces.
http://www-tc.pbs.org/now/shows/230/guantanamo-report.pdf
“86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody.
This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.”
An alternative source, trying to be the most generous they could to the US, has said that at least a third of the detainees at GITMO were not only not affiliated with the Taliban or al-Qaeda in any way, but were also not even jihadists of ANY kind (which would include northern alliance and guys fighting the N.A for internal struggles unrelated to Taliban etc.)
http://harpers.org/archive/2006/09/sb-six-questions-emile-nakhleh-1158706094
From this “Six Questions” Harpers piece (they do these a lot on different subjects with different interviewees) with Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh who worked for the CIA for 15 years and was one of their top specialists on political and radical Islam and who was sent to interviews in GITMO in 2002:
“I spent hours talking with prisoners about why they had become jihadists and how they came to Guantánamo. Some of the detainees participated in jihad in Afghanistan, mostly against the Northern Alliance; others did not but were caught in the dragnet– "having been at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Even the command down there knew that probably one-third of the prisoners were neither terrorists nor jihadists, and wouldn’t have been there if we weren’t paying a bounty to Pakistani security forces for every Middle Eastern-looking person they handed over to us. Almost every detainee I spoke to claimed that we paid $5,000 per person. Unfortunately, we treated everyone the same, which led the non-jihadists at Guantánamo to hate us as much as the rest, becoming more hardened in their attitudes toward the US and more disappointed in the American sense of fairness and justice. ”
Q Our invasion plans weren’t secret, why did they stay?
A. Different situations for different individuals, but you may remember two women missionaries also in Afghanistan when we invaded. Were they terrorists too by virtue of being in Afghanistan? Once we rescued them from the Taliban, shouldn’t we have sent them GITMO like we did other prisoners of the Taliban who were sold to us?
More seriously and to the point, I think most of the Uighurs were actually taken in Pakistan where they fled from the invasion. You know, doing what you thought they should do afotl.
As to the knowledge of everyone in the mountain regious of Afghanistan – I’m not sure how many had time to watch CNN and with Uighurs, who spoke a different language as well, I think this might have been even more so an issue. Also, these guys are poor, (already mentioned don’t necessarily speak the local language) and the mountains aren’t that hospitable to free travel. Sometimes when you are there, you are there for awhile. One interesting book that isn’t US political is Three Cups of Tea and you really might enjoy reading it. Or not. Whatever, I don’t pretend to know you and know if you want information or if you have some other agenda.
I don’t really have time to dig up lots of links, but here is one that has some info on some of the Uighurs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301362.html
“Information on how the Uighurs ended up at Guantanamo is scarce and limited to U.S. summations from interrogations. Qassim and Hakim fled the city of Ghulja in China to Central Asia in 2001. They met in Kyrgyzstan and traveled to Pakistan, then to Afghanistan, where they received training in use of small arms, according to a recent court statement by Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo.
After the United States attacked Afghanistan in 2001, they fled to Pakistan, where they were captured by bounty hunters, according to their lawyers and court papers.”
Q. “Where any of them armed and if so, why?”
Well, despite the fact that in the moutains of Afghanistan, and Pakistan EVERYONE is armed – literally everyone including the women have their own AK-47s and everyone pretty much needs them too, because you are talking about in essence the wild west moved to central asia and it’s like asking if pioneers had guns – still, a) when the bounty hunters turned them over to the US they were not armed and b) none were taken in any armed conflict at all (many being duped by bounty hunters into thinking they were being invited to visit or pray) .
Q. Did any of them shoot at or kill any of our troops? If so, why?
A. No. None were taken in any conflict situations. All were turned over to the US for money by bounty hunters, criminals and warlords. The US govt does not even begin to claim that ANY were EVER involved in any armed conflict or that they were members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
Even a right-wing nutcase like Dana Rohrabacher knows the Uighurs thought the US was great (like the Mujahadeen did when we were helping them against the Soviets) and is ready to put on paper, in writing, that these guys are no threat and should actually be brought to the US.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/41907.html
“In a June 19 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that was released Monday, Reps. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., say that the Uighurs are friends of the United States and should be paroled to the U.S. ”
And while it doesn’t apply to the Uighurs, this concept that anyone fighting against the US troops once they invaded Afghanistan is just flat out wrong. The Geneva Conventions and military doctrine provide that those who take up arms against an invading force are LAWFUL combatants, even if they are not part of a uniformed military. So those who are taken on battlefields (there are very few of those too) would actually be lawful combatants and entitled to treatment as a POW. The only way someone gets to be an unlawful enemy combatant is to like them to non-uniformed, not under color of open war, covert attacks, esp attackas on civlians. So what makes the members of al-Qaeda unlawful enemy combatants has nothing to do with them fighting against invading US troops, it has to do with their own criminal actions outside of Afghanistan. But that’s a non-sequitor.
Q: “Were any of them aiding or helping in any way any of the Taliban or other resistance fighters against the invading US troops? ”
A. No. Although by “in any way” I’m not sure what you mean. Would, for example, praying that Afghanistan repels infidel invaders be “in any way” helping? Taking money to clean latrines at a Taliban encampment? Running to the market to get tomatos for pay?
Not that it matters, since the Uighurs were fleeing the invasion, but this is another of those silly/stupid/unrealistic areas of the DTA and MCA.
There is an Uighur separatist movement called the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and once we ended up with the embarassing Uighur detentions, our govt has tried to claim some kind of ties between al-Qaeda and this group. The main “tie” appears to be that al-Qaeda propaganda that is supports the Uighurs fights against the godless communists who are trying to occupy “their” Muslim lands.
In any event, claims of ties to ETIM got thrown in with the sink once they realized that someone might actually look to the evidence, but despite the bare and bald allegations of affiliation, there has never been any evidence that any of the Uighurs at GITMO are even ETIM members (and if that would make them “supporters” of al-Qaeda, then everyone in the US who helped the Mujahaden during the Soviet conflict are also “supporters” who provided assistance to al-Qaeda. You get to the “have you lusted in your heart ” aspects and things start to become ridiculous.
Q”Why won’t any other country take them? What about their own country — "China? ”
A -As to China, that has to have been already answered for your above. As to other countries, there are assorted reasons. First, why should they – this is a mess the US created and if it has resources to fund billions a day in Iraq, it can take care of 22 Chinese guys. Second – this is a matter of saving face with China (who the US did let come down to GITMO to “interview” the detainees – reportedly a very pleasant little episode) and they have alerted countries that they will be displeased and take actions on the trade, diplomatic protest, economic sanctions, restrictions on those nations backed joint ventures in China, etc. Third, after the US has purchased and blackholed these people for years and years and used them for human interrogation and will-breaking experimentation, there are reports that many are no longer what we would term “sane” and there are concerns that of the sane, some might resent what happened to them. Fourth, the US has also been trying for some face saving and has tried to have countries that take GITMO releases agree to lock them up there, the problem being that there is nothing that most have done or could be charged with, so the countries would have to break their own laws for the immoral purpose of locking up someone to keep the US and China from being embarassed under the arrangements the US tried to brokers once upon a time.
This was reportedly part of the problem in many cases, including, for example, Murat Kurnaz. Kurnaz was also taken by bounty hunters in Pakistan (I think Musharef claimed in his book that we paid millions and millions to Pakistan in bounties). He was a German resident who had Turkish nationality and almost immediately after getting to GITMO the US recieved all kinds of intelligence reports – their own and from other countries – that he was not a terrorist, not a threat, never should have been sent there.
His is a bizarre story of a couple hundred pages of “classified” evidence his defense lawyers couldn’t see for years, all of which was reports that he was not a terrorist and should be released. Except for one bizarre memo prepared after he got to GITMO and which had stupid stuff in it, including the allegation that a friend of his in Germany had been a suicide bomber.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/international/europe/05prisoner.html
“The most striking element in the picture is that, contrary to the American assumption about Mr. Bilgin having carried out a suicide bombing, the Germans say that claim is demonstrably false.
‘He lives here,’ Uwe Picard, the Bremen criminal prosecutor who carried out the German investigation into Mr. Bilgin, said in an interview in his office here. ‘He is still alive.’”
Not only still alive, but Bilgin never left Germany.
Again, even a consistent right wing imperial Republican President supporter choked a bit on the Kurnaz case.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3868-2005Mar26.html
“Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University who supports the tribunal process, said the lack of evidence against Kurnaz is ‘very troubling’ and should prompt a military review of this particular tribunal.
‘Failing to do that would undercut the argument that the military, in times of war, is capable of policing itself.’
Did that ever happen? Nope.
From the same story, a German prosecutor:
“‘And as I see it, the Americans really have no reason to hold Mr. Kurnaz. That wouldn’t be allowed under German law.’”
And this is the problem with trying to require, as the US continued to do for so long, that those turned over to another country be imprisoned by THAT country. It just hasn’t happened much because there are almost never any crimes any of these guys can be charged with.
If you are interested and look even just a little, you will find the instances of heroes of the Northern Alliance (our allies in the invasion) who had been imprisoned by the Taliban for trying to fight al-Qaeda, who were taken from Taliban prisons and sold the the US and shipped off to GITMO. You will find all kinds of people who ended up there for all kinds of reasons.
GITMO has never been a battlefield detentions, POW camp. If it had been, it never would have caused all this uproar. If the Geneva Conventions, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and US law (including the War Crimes Act) had been adhered to, we’d still have standing. Thousands and thousands fewer jihadis would have been recruited. Actual Al-Qaeda would have been tried and convicted. We wouldn’t be in Iraq now. Etc. etc. etc. etc.
But instead Bush required lawless depravity from the get go. And here’s the big big problem for everyone involved when it comes to GITMO.
The US War Crimes Act makes serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions actionable under US criminal law. Within the Geneva Conventions, there are provisions for people who are not combatants of any kind (per the CIA’s Nakhleh, at least 1/3 of the GITMO detainees). One of those provisions, Article 49, makes it a serious breach (langauge used by the conventions themselves) to send these “protected persons” out of country.
POWs you can ship out of country, but non-combatants you can’t (reasons like the Nazi death camps for Jewish civilians being indicative of the reasons why the drafters were so concerned about that item). So even if they could cover up the abuse visited on the “detainees” sent to GITMO, once they were forced to release names they were in a situation where it became clear for everyone NOT an “enemy combatant” who had been bought and shipped to GITMO, there was a war crime under the US War Crimes act. Even if they did destroy the evidence of torture – the war crime was complete once people were sent out of country.
This is why, as a matter of papework, every detainee who was eventually released was released with a finding, not that they were “not an enemy combatant” but that they were “no longer an enemy combatant.” As a matter of fact, in the tribunals were originally detainees were held by any member of the tribunal to be “not an enemy combatant” they just would hold another tribunal with another panel to get the paper that said “enemy combatant”
This is why some are wondering, now that the DC Appellate court has unanimously ruled that the detainee never was an enemy combatant, what this will mean. As Jay Hood, former Commander at GITMO, told the Wall Street Journal, “Sometimes we just didn’t get the right folks.”
This panel, btw, is a Clinton appointee, a Reagan appointee and a GWB appointee and this is one of the cases that was ready to be decided when first the DTA, then the MCA, prevented courts from proceeding and that’s why it could be decided so quickly – it had already been before the court for a long time.
And this issue of the vested interest in protecting the chain of command officers who bought the “protected persons” and ordered their shipment to GITMO and continued blackholing there has been around for awhile too.
From this Uighur case report back in 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202118.html
the judge:
“lashed out at the military’s term for those who pose no threat. ‘The government’s use of the Kafka-esque term “no longer enemy combatants” deliberately begs the question of whether these petitioners ever were enemy combatants,’ he wrote
There’s lots more, e.g.,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1940199.ece
but I kind of think you don’ t really want more.
If you want to hear the “other side” (including the ridiculous fib about the returns to the battlefield) you can listen to Cully Stimson’s part of this NPR interview about the DC Cir decision.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91468854
Cully is the guy who went on the airwaves to try to suggest that lawyers representing GITMO detainees were treasonous and that maybe their law firms should be punished by corporate clients firing the firms if the representation continued.
Lotus, in the interest of decorum, would you reconsider your last comment?
Afotl got his questions – which he is entitled to raise – comprehensively answered, which was a service to us all.
I have enjoyed folo since November, but the last several weeks have seen far too much unseemly bickering where once discourse and discussion, even civilized disputation, prevailed. We’re all starting to sound like Bellesouth.
I’ll concede the point I’m glad I never attempted to make. With my field plowed the plow cleaned and I never even posted a thought on this thread. Thank goodness. Otherswise I’d have to slither off into the darkness with my proverbial tail tucked.
On a related note, I’m just glad we’ve got knowledgeable and resourceful folks here to help sort out all these issues…so many that need attention, how do we possibly priortize? Everything can’t be the “most important.” So sometimes it is “issues,” at other times an “event,” and sometimes it is a “person.”
Thanks Mary for a very insightful post.
soms, point well taken, and as soon as I finish typing this (and my computer has time to complete a couple of many-second lags in responsiveness), I’ll not only reconsider but delete that comment. Alas, my capacity for exasperation has been met and exceeded today in several areas, as you’ve seen.
Wow. Looks like I missed some fireworks, perhaps directed my way, but its hard to tell since my secret decoder ring cannot fully decipher the cryptic language of the last 2-3 comments.
Thanks Mary for your response. Very interesting read —yes, it was more than I bargained for, but in fairness to you, I did ask a bunch of questions. So, I got a bunch of info in response.
After reading Mary’s comment, and spending a little time reading other internet articles about the Uighurs, I am inclined to be sympathetic to their plight, but at the same time, think they put themselves in this precarious situation as well, and thus, must bear some degree of personal responsibility for their own predicament.
I note the following from an article in the The Weekly Standard 12/5/99 by John Derbyshire:
——————
“Current attitudes among the Uighurs can be gauged from the fact that their main expatriate organization, the Istanbul-based Eastern Turkestan National Center, is headed not by a monk but by an ex-General in the Turkish army, Korean War veteran Reza Bekin. Even so, the ETNC is regarded as insufferably tame by yet more militant Uighur groups. Chinese dissident journalist Cao Chang-ching, who published a long and illuminating report on East Turkestan in the October 11th TAIPEI TIMES, unearthed one group calling themselves “The Home of Eastern Turkestan Youth” who claimed 2,000 members and told him that “the Chinese only understand force”. They also refer to themselves as “the Hamas of Eastern Turkestan” and brandish slogans like “every one of us is a bomb”.
This is not idle boasting; the three bomb explosions of February 1997 in Urumqi, Eastern Turkestan’s capital, was only the best-reported of a large number of violent incidents in the region– including, most recently, a well-equipped attack on a Chinese missile base. The Chinese themselves now routinely report intercepting arms shipments coming into Eastern Turkestan– a thing they have not had to worry about in Tibet since the CIA operations of the early 1960s. There is a general feeling that progress on the Karakoram Highway, intended to link China with Pakistan, is being held up by Chinese foot-dragging, probably because they fear too-easy communications between the Uighurs and their ethnic kin in Central Asia.
It is not Buddhist monks that China faces in her western colony but Turks, cousins of those fearless warriors– the Huns, the Seljuks, the Ottomans– who terrorized Europe and the Middle East for twelve hundred years. The national symbol of the Uighur is a wolf. This is not a people that will go quietly into the long night of Chinese imperial domination. ”
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With that bit of recent history as a backdrop to this situation, it seems plausible that some, if not all, of the 22 Uighurs who were taken into custody by the US (5 in Pakistan, and 17 in Afghanistan) left their own country of China due to threat of Chinese prosecution for alleged crimes (perhaps some with merit and some without). And the fact that they had taken “shelter” in a training camp for and with members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban at least, on the surface, indicates that they were perhaps waiting to return to China one day to fight against the Chinese govt.
It seems clear that they were Chinese citizens, and not citizens of Afghanistan. What is not clear is whether they had permission from Afghanistan to be in the country —did Afghanistan have an open border at that time? or any laws preventing unfettered entry into the country? OR did they indeed have permission from the govt. leaders at the time?
I disagree with the premise that the US had no legitimate cause to take these 22 Uighurs into custody and detain them, under the circumstances —- eg had been at an Al Qaeda and Taliban training camp, were likely armed (as most other males in the country), and may have aided the Taliban and Al Qaeda upon the US invasion. As Mary points out, the US was apparently aided by others (in exchange for reward money, etc.) in the capture of these 22 Uighurs. There would have likely been some early finger pointing and allegations made by these folks to be checked out. And some of the Uighurs could have provided information to help with the capture of other Uighurs and of Al Qaeda and Taliban members (due to their having been “sheltered” with them). There would have been no way for the US to properly sort out all of this complicated scenario early in the process of their detention.
Now (actually quite a while back), the US is ready to release them, having determined that they no longer pose any threat to the US or our War on terror, and have no more useful information to provide to further US interests.
But, one big problem: no one wants them because they do not want to anger China (as opposed to the asserted proposition that US propaganda is the driving influence in their unwanted status) . 5 were released to Albania, and Albania has since tried to expel them. China wants them back for prosecution (and may very well have legitimate reasons —- I have not been able to tell from all the info available, as most every article is presented with facts to support some agenda against GWB/administration, which does not include the reason they left China in the first place). The detainees do not want to go back to China. IF we take them, we risk a foreign relations debacle with China, who we are not at War with nor want to be. Taking sides with the Uighurs would most certainly provoke China. And provoking China in such a way is not in our national security interest.
Thinking this through, lets just say that these folks had never been taken into custody. China would still want them back to prosecute them. The US did not cause that problem of the Uighurs — it apparently pre-existed their exodus into Afghanistan. And as non-citizens of any other country, they have no “right” to live in any other country —this would have been true had they been left to their own devices. Its highly doubtful that Afghanistan’s new post- US invasion govt. would have wanted them to remain in the country. So, how are they any worse off now, than they would have been had we not taken them into custody? Some of them could very well have been imprisoned elsewhere by another govt. in far worse conditions or they could be dead now.
And one irony is that all the publicity about their plight has probably contributed to the inability of the US to just quietly release them to an anonymous country willing to accept them –or just quielty and discreetly release them into the US.
What a mess.
With the westward expansion of China’s population, the Uighurs appear to be a people who just increasingly do not fit in China. Sort of reminds me of our native American Indians during our own westward expansion. Like the American Indians, the Uighurs appear to not want to assimilate and are fighting the Chinese govt. for independence — to create a separate state. And its understandable that China does not want to cede any territory to the Uighurs. And while my heart is with the Uighurs and their pursuit of freedom, this is simply not our fight.
Perhaps there will be a movie soon to educate the masses about the Uighurs — “No Country for Uighurs”.