The Hindu Business Line : Worldwide revulsion

It is a great pity and a matter of shame that the US is continuing to defy world opinion over the concentration camp it has set up at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. It has detained there, without trial and without any form of legal redress, more than 450 persons suspected of having links with top rungs of the dreaded Al Qaeda.

The Bush Administration has also been denying human rights organisations access to see the conditions at the prison for themselves, but enough is known of the degrading, even inhuman, treatment to which the detainees are subjected to evoke universal condemnation. The United Nations Secretary-General as also some of the close allies of the US have been demanding the closure of the camp.

The Bush Administration was rapped on the knuckles two years ago by the US Supreme Court, which flatly declared that the US Government had no authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts. The response of the President and his Neocon diehards was to establish war crime tribunals under the aegis of the military and have the detainees brought before them for trial with severe restrictions on the rights of defence.

The US Supreme Court, in its latest judgment, has struck down the proposed trials by military tribunals as illegal under US law and international Geneva conventions. Unfazed, President Bush has declared that he would go to the Congress and get legal cover for the tribunals.

The nation is also bogged down in fierce controversies over intrusive methods of surveillance over phone talks and bank accounts of citizens. How come the US Administration is not living up to its own homilies on human rights and basic freedoms on the domestic front and in its foreign policy?

B. S. RAGHAVAN