Sorry, But Pizza and Fried Chicken Don’t Make the Uighur Prisoners “Free Men”

Instead of freeing 17 Chinese Muslims cleared for release, the Obama administration continues to hold them at Gitmo. But, hey, they get junk food and computers!

By Jeremy Scahill

Nothing gives lie to the idea that there is any semblance of due process for prisoners held at the US prison camp at Guantanamo more than the case of the 17 Uighurs, Chinese Muslims, who remain imprisoned despite being cleared for release and ordered freed by a federal judge. Part of the complexity of the case is that the Uighurs fear they will face persecution if they return to their native China, which the Obama administration has acknowledged. When Attorney General Eric Holder suggested some may be allowed to come to the continental United States (there is a large Uighur community outside of Washington DC), Newt Gingrich and Congressional Republicans responded as though the Uighurs carried the plague and portrayed them as terrorists that would threaten US national security. Democrats “largely agreed.” Several European nations have also reportedly refused to accept the men and other nations have resisted because of concerns about offending China.

On Monday, the Uighurs staged a brief protest at Guantanamo, holding up signs with messages written with crayons. Among the signs were: “We are being oppressed in prison though we had been announced innocent” and “We need to freedom.” Another said, ”We were an oppressed nation in China. Now we are being oppressed in America for a second time.” At one point, one of the men shouted, “Obama didn’t release us. Why?” The Uighurs were ordered released in October 2008.

Rather than releasing the men, the Obama administration has tried to act as though they are, well, sort of free at Guantanamo. As The Miami Herald reports:

Instead, the military moved the men to a small razor-wire ringed compound called Camp Iguana, away from the 220 foreign captives here still held as enemy combatants. As detainees approved for release, they have been receiving increasingly greater liberties — such as weekly telephone calls, takeout fried chicken and pizza and a wooden hut set aside to serve as a mosque.

Monday, they staged the polite protest for about five minutes for visiting reporters before guards hustled the journalists away.

”As you can see, they are pretty much free men,” said a Navy chief who supervises sailors guarding the men at the half-acre compound. He called the protest ”their own doing,” and permitted a dozen reporters visiting the prison to film the signs.

Unclear Monday evening was how much of the video would survive a censor’s review.

In the latest move, the US is reportedly setting up a “computer lab” for the Uighurs, but they will not have access to email or the Internet. As the Navy chief said, ”they are pretty much free men.”

Last Friday, the Obama Justice Department filed a 33 page brief with the Supreme Court that purported to support the release of the Uighurs while simultaneously arguing for their continued imprisonment. As Andy Worthington wrote:

In presenting the government’s brief to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan had the nerve to claim that the Uighurs “have already obtained relief,” explaining, “They are no longer detained as enemy combatants, they are free to leave Guantánamo Bay to any country that is willing to accept them, and in the meantime, they are housed in facilities separate from those for enemy combatants under the least restrictive conditions practicable.”

Cynics might note that living in Guantánamo, under whatever conditions, does not constitute the “relief” that the Supreme Court had in mind last June, but this did not deter the solicitor general, who continued to channel the Bush administration by maintaining that the court of appeals “properly recognized that whether to admit an alien into the United States presents a question wholly distinct from issues concerning detention abroad – and a question that is reserved to the political branches.” She added that the Supreme Court “has repeatedly stressed that whether to allow an alien into the United States is a sovereign prerogative that requires the consent of the political branches.”

[…]

In an attempt to paint a rosy picture of the Uighurs’ current conditions of confinement, the Justice Department “sought to persuade the court,” as SCOTUSblog put it, that the Uighurs “are not really being detained any longer.” Their “continued presence at Guantánamo Bay,” the brief stated, “is not unlawful detention, but rather the consequence of their lawful exclusion from the United States, under the constitutional exercise of authority by the political branches, coupled with the unavailability of another country willing to accept them.” The brief added that, because their exclusion from the U.S. “is constitutionally valid, their resulting harborage at Guantánamo Bay is constitutional as well.”