The illegal occupation of the Guantánamo Naval Base
by María Josefina Arce
The Guantánamo Naval Base, located in territory illegally occupied by the United States in eastern Cuba, is not only an affront to Cuba's sovereignty, but also to human dignity and a focus of tension and provocation against the Cuban Revolution.
Now, U.S. President Donald Trump wants to turn the enclave into a large detention center for immigrants he has been tasked with forcibly expelling from U.S. territory.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel described the announcement by the tenant of the White House to house some 30,000 immigrants in this military facility as an act of brutality by the new US administration.
The base already has a sad record of human rights violations. In its alleged fight against terrorism, the United States has set up illegal prisons all over the world, and Guantanamo was one of them.
This enclave is synonymous with the torture and mistreatment that Washington has inflicted on detainees for their alleged links to terrorism. All kinds of degrading and inhumane practices have been used against the more than 700 detainees.
Sleep deprivation, brutal beatings, electric shocks and induced hypothermia were some of the tortures used.
In a statement, the State Department also recalls that people were held there for up to 20 years who had never been charged or convicted of a crime.
In fact, successive U.S. administrations have ignored international human rights complaints pointing out that the Guantanamo prison operate as a legal black hole.
In addition, human rights organizations have denounced the fact that this enclave is already home to the Migration Operations Center, which is used for people intercepted at sea on their way to the United States and held in prison-like conditions.
But this military installation is also identified with all kinds of aggressions against the Cuban people. Between 1962 and 1996 alone, there were more than 8,000 territorial violations, both by air and sea, and thousands of hostile incidents.
Cuba and its people demand the return of the territory illegally occupied by the United States, which also constitutes a threat to the security and stability of Latin America and the Caribbean, which was declared a zone of peace by the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Havana in 2014.
