“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
With these words, the founders of our nation both declared and justified the creation of the United States.
These ideals-centered around those God-given inalienable rights which belong to every human being-have since formed the basis of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, the American justice system and freedom-centric American way of life.
For nearly four years, the Bush administration has conveniently ignored the “God-given” part of these rights.
Specifically, the prisoners incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 have been denied their rights under U.S. law.
They have been imprisoned for four years, but not as criminals. Neither have they been treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention and its rules about treatment of prisoners of war.
Instead, the Adminstration has repeatedly claimed that the prisoners have no constitutional rights.
The rights described in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights clearly derive from the Declaration’s of Independence God-given trio-Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The United States is founded upon the idea that a government that ignores those rights is unjust.
Thus, the Bush administration’s assumption that the prisoners’ somehow don’t have rights runs counter to the very fabric of American society-a hypocrisy visible to the entire world.
It makes the United States look deceitful, self-righteous and untrustworthy-a nuclear armed pharisee preaching one way and acting another.
The problem isn’t that prisoners are being detained; it’s that they are being detained without any legal status. This allows the U.S. government, normally limited by the protections enshrined in the Constitution, to ignore their rights-something no government, especially the United States, should ever be able to do.
Imagine being held in a prison without any sort of charge and therefore no chance to defend your innocence. In America, that is called kidnapping.
If the government recognizes their rights-as it must-the prisoners must be either rebels or invaders, criminally charged or prisoners of war. They are clearly not rebels or invaders, as most of the have never even been to the United States.
So they must be either prisoners of war, entitling them to protections under the Geneva Conventions, or criminally charged, entitling them directly to the right to writ of habeas corpus-the prisoner’s right to have a court determine if they are being held lawfully-and the due process and speedy, fair trial provisions of the Constitution.
Fortunately, the checks and balances built into the Constitution force even the “most powerful man in the world” to recognize the universality of the fundamental rights described by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green declared that constitutional protections do in fact apply to the Guantanamo prisoners.
Specifically, the petitions filed by the prisoners under the Fifth Amendment’s “right to a speedy and public trial” correctly claim that the administration’s labeling the prisoners as “‘enemy combatants’ subject to indefinite detention violate the petitioners’ rights to due process of law.”
Unfortunately, the cases will likely be appealed and make its way up the Supreme Court, which ought to uphold the fundamental American principle that rights belong to everyone and back Green’s ruling.
Hopefully, the prisoners will be given their proper status as rapidly as possible. Then, any true terrorists among them can be brought to justice, while the innocents or simple soldiers may be treated correctly.
In declaring that the prisoners have rights under the Constitution, Judge Green takes a step toward restoring my faith in the American justice system-a system where rights should never be arbitrarily denied.
Hopefully, Green’s ruling will quickly go into effect, removing the blight of hypocrisy from the American spirit created by the unjust and unconstitutional treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Nathan Alday is a senior aerospace engineering major. He can be reached at [email protected].