Doing capoeira in Slovakia (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantanamo, both in terms of detention and torture. Our decision to keep Guantanamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States.
— Marine Major General Michael Lehnert
Three Guantanamo Bay detainees were relocated last week to Slovakia. Yusef Abbas, 33, Saidullah Khalik, 37, and Hajiakbar Abdul Ghuper, 39 were the last ethnic Uyghur Chinese nationals to leave the detention center in Guantanamo, after having been stuck in legal limbo for the last five years. Slovakia previously accepted three other Guantanamo Bay prisoners from Azerbaijan, Tunisia, and Egypt in 2009.
Having done in-country research on Islam in Slovakia (where I was simultaneously connecting with my Slovak roots), I can’t imagine too many Slovaks cartwheeling with joy over their country’s latest “humanitarian gesture” in accepting Uyghur detainees–since xenophobia is currently on the rise in Slovakia.
A few weeks ago in Sudan, on the day I was leaving Khartoum to return home to Beirut, two Sudanese detainees from Guantanamo Bay were arriving at the same airport from where I was departing. After landing in Khartoum, they shared how they had been “systematically tortured” in the course of their 11 year imprisonment. Time will tell if these recent transfers from Gitmo to Slovakia and Sudan are part of a new trend of relocating more detainees (with even the former general who opened the camp calling for the site to be shut down)–or if the detention in Cuba of the remaining 155 prisoners (or “packages”) will continue on for many more years to come…
