For years, many have protested the inhumane treatment that takes place at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, and over time the US government has begun to scale back their activity at that site. However, they have not stopped the torture of detainees and other inhumane practices that the US military is involved in, these activities have just been spread out across numerous other bases both in the US and abroad.
In a recent Pentagon strategy to relocate prisoners from Guantanamo, the agency is proposing that the prison be moved to a military base in Charleston, South Carolina.
According to Department of Defense spokesperson Gary Ross, the base in Charleston will be inspected this week to see if it is suitable as a replacement.
“These site surveys are necessary to determine potential locations for detaining a limited number of individuals in the United States and to assess the costs associated with doing so. Prudent planning and site visits are necessary in order to assess all potential locations and costs associated with any potential options,” Ross told the Associated Press in an emailed statement.
If the Charleston location is not chosen then there are other possibilities that are also being considered, including Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. However, many states have been resistant to the plan, with the governor of Kansas recently threatening to sue Obama if detainees from the infamous prison are brought to his state.
Some of the detainees were children when captured, throughout the prison’s dark history there have been multiple cases of children as young as 12 or 13 years old who were tortured and held without trial. In fact, although the prison still holds over 100 people, almost 1000 have passed through, and many of them were proven innocent and released years after being declared an “enemy combatant” and submitting to torture and imprisonment.
Over the years, the military dungeons at Guantanamo Bay have become largely forgotten by the general population back home in the US. Since the election of Barack Obama, many of the people who protested wars and the inhumane acts of the military industrial complex are now silent as if nothing has ever happened. To make matters even worse, the practices at Guantanamo have been exported elsewhere, so even if the prison does eventually close down, the culture of violence and torture that it represented will continue to live on in prisons and military bases across the world.
John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter-culture and the drug war.
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