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7-20-05, 9:23 am
The United States Must Leave Guantanamo Now!
For over a century the United States has intervened, made war, imposed imperialist treaties against the rights of the Cuba people to sovereignty of their country.
In 1897, when Cuba was nearing victory in the Second War of Independence from Spain, Theodore Roosevelt urged the USA President McKinley to intervene.
In 1898, the USA declared war against Spain to prevent Cuba from gaining its independence.
In 1901, among other forced measures to codify control of Cuba, including that "the U.S. may intervene militarily at any time", was the equally outrageous edict that Cuba must sell or lease to a foreign state, the U.S., "lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specific points". Outrageous because these turned out to be or were always intended to be the invasion and annexation of a country's territory by a foreign state.
Guantanamo was a "specific point". A U.S. naval base was built there with the consequences we all know. The poverty of the ex-colonial country was unashamedly exploited by democratic USA with the annual handout of 2 000 dollars in gold, on the righteous premise that it is the moral privilege of a rich power to buy anything, including part of another country. Since 1959 Cuba has not accepted the handout.
What use this virtual theft of a sovereign territory has been put to eventually is the shame and disgrace of the United States and also of the contemporary world, which, intimidated by U.S. power, turns a blind eye to the prison that has been blatantly established in somebody else's country. The horrifyingly inhuman conditions of isolation, deprivation and torture in this medieval prison, condemned by Amnesty International and an increasing number of human rights organisations, continue to be perpetrated by the foreign power, the U.S.A., which has no right to be there.
There are many desecrations of human rights taking place in our world. Many involve conflicts of great complexity, religious, factional; it is immensely difficult to create just solutions to them.
Guantanamo is the outstanding exception.
The just solution is simple.
All and every state, community, above all every individual in this world declared one of global responsibility, who subscribes to the truth that only in justice can real humanity exist between nations and peoples, must demand, in that name, that the U.S.A. leave Guantanamo unconditionally.
Now!
Nadine Gordimer, Salim Lamrani, Noam Chomsky, Rigoberta Menchú, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
From In Defense of Humanity/ En Defensa de la Humanidad
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