IN DEPTH

THE CARIBBEAN’S GUANTANAMO

Guantanamo Bay is often cited as a U.S. human rights transgression. Human rights organizations are giving increasing attention to conditions at the facility being used by Uncle Sam as a detention center for foreign terror suspects. Many West Indian commentators have joined in the parade of criticism and protest against the United States, but hardly any attention is paid to the conditions in West Indian prisons and detention centers. Hardly is any voice raised in condemnation of the manner in which West Indian governments strip detainees and prisoners of human dignity and basic human necessities.

In 1972, Alfred Nettleford commenced 28 years of banishment in the Jamaican prison system. Held without a trial, Nettleford became a forgotten soul, imprisoned in a system that locked him up and threw away the keys without proving his guilt, while the world remained silent, including West Indian commentators who now find Bush’s war on terror a soap opera for frequent columns and articles.

While so many West Indian commentators are preoccupied with the transgressions of Uncle Sam, Alfred Nettleford regained his liberty in 2000, after losing 28 years of his life, without much notice or interest from West Indian commentators. Ironically, a group of exchange students intervened to secure the release of Nettleford, who was charged with breaking a window at a bank in Clarendon in 1972.

When Nettleford regained his freedom, he was described as being close to death and the BBC had the nerve to state in an article, that the 77 year old reportedly showed no remorse, as if 28 years of imprisonment without a trial places the burden of showing remorse on Nettleford rather than the State.

While Nettleford was being released, I was on a two-day observation of Guyana’s Camp street prison for my documentary "Behind Bars." One inmate expressed frustration at being imprisoned for 18 years while his rape trial remained pending. The Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, had described the situation in the prison as volatile, and the then Chancellor of the Judiciary, Desiree Bernard, in a rare interview with me, described the judicial system as bursting at the seams.

The problems with West Indian prisons have persisted for long without remedy or protest. Even the region’s vocal columnists and activists have not sufficiently challenged governments to be accountable, opting instead to be more vocal about atrocities committed by foreign States. As a result of this mindset, governments in the region, which engage in and have failed to remedy human rights atrocities, are given a pass. There is even the spread of the belief that patriotism compels distorting or ignoring facts to paint a good picture of one’s native land to the world. The belief that it is unpatriotic to highlight the ills of one’s country of birth results in the complicity and multiplicity of human rights violations.

The long detention of treason accused Mark Benschop had received a trickle of sporadic condemnation until Bens-chop was freed, but it is neither a problem unique to Benschop nor is it a problem that emerged recently. Benschop was detained for five years without a finding of guilt. There are other forgotten souls languishing in Guyana’s prison without a trial, making the constitutional right to a speedy trial and due process of law seem more like window dressings than enforceable rights against the State.

While more and more West Indian commentators are focusing on the U.S., the horrifying findings of two investigations of conditions in Jamaica’s prisons and lockups, done by Human Rights Watch in 1990 and 1993, have not been sufficiently highlighted and remedied. In 1991, for instance, a report from UK consultants found a thirteen-year-old boy, detained for thirteen days in an unlit and unventilated cell for stealing pineapples.

In October 1992, Jamaican authorities confined 19 men in an eight by seven cell at the Constant Spring lockup, with holes drilled into the solid door being the only ventilation. The men were held in the cell for forty-eight hours, with their complaint of lack of air ignored by police. Three died from asyphyxiation. According to a Human Rights Watch finding, all of the institutions "failed to provide the barest essential for decent treatment." If anything close to this had happened at Guantanamo where terror suspects are held, earth would have become hell as hostility and condemnation would rage against the Bush administration.

Why then does Guantanamo receive so much scrutiny and West Indian commentators make Bush the focus of their pens while giving free tickets to atrocities in their native lands? The watchdog human rights organization found "Sanitation in the two main penitentiaries is frightful: human excrement ran though the grounds of one prison. An overwhelming stench pervaded the prison … Inmates had no beds or beddings but slept on concrete floors, often three to a cell that measured five feet by eight feet."

Here are Human Rights Watch own words describing an aspect of conditions under which innocent people are held for prolonged periods: "Al-though the mission’s visit took place during the day, the cellblock was pitch-black and floodlights had to be hooked up from outside the block before the delegation could enter … Inside each cell was a concrete slab upon which one or two prisoners could sleep. The others slept on the floor, which was very wet and filthy. No bedding was provided."

Even as horrifying as they are, no one picked up on these findings and significant follow up investigations were not done. Overcrowding continues to be a problem and prolonged detention continues unabated.

The conditions in prisons and detention centers in the region can easily be described as human torture. For one thing, it’s an assault on the human spirit in ways that transform gentle men and women into hardcore criminals or crude and cruel humans with blunt emotions. The region’s prisons are often casually referred to as cradles of criminals and initiation stations.

While producing "Behind Bars," I heard stories from prisoners and prison officials of prisoners who lost their sanity. A defining feature of Guyana’s Camp Street prison is the prisoner on the roof. It is to the roof of prison buildings that Guy-anese prisoners often resort to get their concerns heard, but even this unusual protest is usually received with indifference, often a source of amusement, rather than a catalyst for prison reform.

Prison riots and fires are frequent, with unacceptable conditions often providing the fuel for such raging anger against the authorities. Guyana’s Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, says he eats, drinks and thinks about prison twenty-four-seven (24/7), because at any moment a spark could ignite.

It is easy for free members of society to dismiss the conditions in prisons and detention centers as punishment for society’s deviants, but even this extreme is hard to reconcile with the large number of people detained for long without proof of guilt. This atrocity has become such a norm, that major news agencies such as the BBC instinctively look to a man detained without trial for 28 years, for remorse.

If value is to be given to the constitutional right to due process of law and a speedy trial, the State must proceed without undue delay when it charges its subjects. This is even more necessary when the accused is denied pre-trial liberty as in the case of Mark Benschop and now Oliver Hinckson. If the State cannot try the accused quickly, due process and human decency compels the release of the accused and the withdrawal of all charges.

One failure in the system breeds other failures, with the total collapse of the rule of law being a threatened consequence. Because people are being detained for too long without pre-trial liberty, prisons are severely affected by overcrowding. Because the State refuses to withdraw charges against people it either has insufficient evidence to prosecute or inadequate resources to prosecute, the judicial system is cluttered with charges against many innocent people.

Commentators in the region and outside of the region ought to redirect their agendas, placing more emphasis on atrocities within the region. There are already enough watchdogs trading bites on the Bush administration. The challenge to West Indian commentators is to highlight the forgotten causes in the region, and shine light into the dark holes of almost forgotten societies. Patriotism should remind us that charity begins at home. We should put our own houses in order before we make keeping watch on the homes of others our dedicated mission.

For decades, female prisoners in the region have complained of being sexually abused. Men and women have complained of being beaten with all sorts of objects. Inadequate sanitation facilities have been the order of the day as human beings are crammed into dark holes called cells, without sufficient ventilation and means to excrete.

One cannot even say with a clear conscience that the human degradation taking place in prison continues while free men and women watch from outside. It seems, often free men and women do not watch, do not notice, and do not care about what goes on in prison and the judicial system until reality comes home to them.