Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay (abbreviated as GTMO or "Gitmo") is located at the south-eastern end of Cuba, in the Guantánamo Province, and contains a United States Naval Base (116 km2).
History
The base was established in 1898 when the U.S. obtained control of Cuba from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War. The U.S. government obtained a permanent lease for the base on February 23, 1903 from the newly independent Cuban state. As of 2004, it is still occupied by the US. The lease was arranged through two agreements signed in 1903 and a treaty of 1934. The terms hold the U.S., for the purposes of operating coaling and naval stations, has "complete jurisdiction and control" of the area, while the Republic of Cuba is recognized to retain ultimate sovereignty. The agreement holds further that the U.S. will pay 2000 gold coins (about $4000 in today's money) each year in rent. Since coming to power, Fidel Castro has steadfastly refused to cash the American rent checks because he views the base as illegitimate. The U.S. agreed to return fugitives from Cuban law to Cuban authorities and Cuba agreed to return fugitives from U.S. law, for offences committed in Guantanamo Bay, to U.S. authorities.
The U.S. control of this Cuban territory has never been popular with Cubans. The Cuban Government strongly denounces the treaty on grounds that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 declares in its article 52 that a treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force—in this case by the inclusion, in 1903, of the Platt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban Convention was warned not to modify the Amendment and was told that the U.S. troops would not leave Cuba until its terms had been adopted as a condition from U.S. to grant independence.
The Cuban government cut off water to the base causing the United States to first import water from Jamaica and then to build desalination plants. A few Cubans are still crossing the fence daily to work in the base but the Cuban government does not allow new recruitment.
In fiction, Guantanamo Bay was the setting for the movie A Few Good Men and was also featured in Bad Boys II.
Detention of prisoners
Beginning in 2002 the base has been used to house suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere at Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta and Camp Echo, and has also been used in the past to house Cuban and Haitian refugees who have been intercepted on the high seas. The peculiar legal status of Guantanamo Bay was a factor in these uses. Because sovereignty of Guantanamo Bay ultimately resides with Cuba, the United States government has argued and one circuit court has agreed that people detained at Guantanamo are legally outside of the United States and do not have the Constitutional rights that they would have if they were held on United States territory (see Cuban American Bar Ass'n, Inc. v. Christopher, 43 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1995)). However, in 2004, the Supreme Court rejected this argument in the case Rasul v. Bush with the majority decision and ruled that prisoners in Guantanamo have access to American courts, citing the fact that the United States has exclusive control over Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. has classified the prisoners held at Camp X-Ray as illegal combatants rather than prisoners of war, which would have given them protection through the Geneva Conventions.
See also
Compare with other foreign establishments: Subic Bay, Panama Canal Zone
See also Colonialism.
External links