There were once 22 Uighur prisoners in Guantanamo. Muslims from
China's oppressed Xinjiang province, they had all been swept up as
human debris during "Operation Enduring Freedom," the U.S.-led invasion
of Afghanistan that began in October 2001. The majority of these men
were seized after fleeing to Pakistan from a run-down settlement in
Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains, which had been hit in a U.S. bombing
raid. Initially welcomed by Pakistani villagers, they were then
betrayed and sold to U.S. forces, who were offering $5000 a head for
"al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects."
None of the men had been in Afghanistan to support al-Qaeda or the
Taliban, and none had raised arms against U.S. forces. They all
maintained that they had only one enemy -- the Chinese government --
and explained that they had ended up at the settlement either in the
hope of finding a way of rising up against their oppressors, which was
unlikely, as the settlement was dirt-poor and had only one gun, or
because they had hoped to travel to other countries in search of work
-- primarily Turkey, which has historic connections to the people of
East Turkestan (as the Uighurs call their homeland) -- but had been
thwarted in their aims.
In May 2006, five of the 22 were freed from Guantanamo, after being cleared in a military review, and sent to live in a refugee camp in Albania,
the only country that could be persuaded to accept them after the U.S.
authorities acknowledged that they would not return them to China,
where they faced the risk of torture. For the other 17, justice was to
prove more elusive, and it was until June 2008, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling
confirming that the Guantanamo prisoners had habeas corpus rights (the
right to challenge the basis of their detention in court), that an
appeals court in Washington ruled that the government had failed to establish a case that one of the men -- Huzaifa Parhat -- was an "enemy combatant."
In the wake of the ruling, the government gave up attempting to
prove that the other 16 Uighurs were "enemy combatants," and when their
case came up before District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina last October,
he ruled that their continued detention was unconstitutional, and that,
because no other country had been found that would accept them, they
were to be admitted to the United States, to the care of communities in Washington and Tallahassee, Florida, who had prepared detailed plans for their resettlement.
This proved intolerable to the Bush administration, which appealed the decision. The Justice Department spouted unprincipled claims
that the men were a threat (even though they had been cleared of being
"enemy combatants"), and refused to acknowledge that a judge had the right to order the men's release
into the United States, thereby robbing the Supreme Court of a key
element of the powers it intended to grant to the lower courts when it
confirmed, in June, that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights.
Despite its manifest weaknesses, the government's appeal -- in a
court that had a history of backing up cases relating to the "War on
Terror" that were later overruled by the Supreme Court -- was
successful. This is the situation that prevails to this day, although on Monday the Uighurs' lawyers announced
that they planned "to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on
their clients' behalf," and, perhaps even more significantly, last week
it was reported that the Obama administration was "set to reverse a key
Bush administration policy by allowing some of the 240 remaining
Guantanamo Bay inmates to be resettled on American soil." As the Guardian
described it, "Washington has told European officials that once a
review of the Guantanamo cases is completed, the U.S. will almost
certainly allow some inmates to resettle on the mainland."
If confirmed, it is possible that these men will include some, or
all of the Uighurs, but in the meantime Abu Bakker Qassim, one of the
five Uighurs freed in Albania in 2006, who left his pregnant wife and
young son in a thwarted attempt to find work in Turkey, has just
written a letter to President Obama, telling his story and appealing to
the President to act on behalf of the remaining Uighurs in Guantanamo.
The letter was made available by Sabin Willett, one of the Uighurs' attorneys, and is reproduced below:
Abu Bakker Qassim's letter to Barack Obama
Dear Mr. President,
I express my gratitude and my best respect for the contribution of
the United States of America to our Uighur community. At the same time,
I express my gratitude for your right and prompt decision to close the
jail of Guantanamo Bay. I hope you will forgive my English, which I
have tried to learn.
I hope my letter will find you in a good health. Please allow me to express my wish and prayer to read my letter.
My name is Abu Bakker and I'm writing on behalf of Ahmet, Aktar,
Ejup, with whom I have lived since May 2006 in Albania, the only
country that offered us political asylum from Guantanamo when US courts
concluded that we were not enemy combatants.
I would like to write something about myself. The Uighur people have
a proverb: "Who thinks about the end will never be a hero." Obviously
it is human to think about the end, as it is human for me to remember
things long ago.
30.12.2000. My last night in my little home. No one was sleeping ...
not even my eight-month twins in my wife's womb. No one was speaking
... even my two-year old son ... I had decided that I would confess
that night to my wife the end I had thought of in my heart, but I
hesitated because of a question my son had asked me, that I could not
answer. It was at the beginning of winter. We were standing near the
oven, and I was cuddling his hands. He took with his little hands my
forefinger.
Dad! Is a fingernail a bone?
No, I said. The fingernail is not a bone.
It is flesh?
No. Neither is it flesh.
So, the fingernail: what is it, Dad?
I didn't know.
I don't know, I said.
So small was my boy, and I couldn't answer his questions. And when
he grows up and the questions are not about the fingernail? How shall I
answer then?
31.12.2000. Without telling the end, without turning back my head,
without fear I started my long and already known way. "Ah, if only ...!
Ah, if only I reach Istanbul, am hired in the factory, to work day and
night, to save my self and money. God is great! Ah, if only I could
bring my wife there, my son and -- the most important -- to see my
twins for the first time in Istanbul. To hold them on my breast, to
pick up as I could ... to show my son and to tell to them: We are from
the place where the sun rises. I would embrace them, I would answer all
of their questions, I would teach to them everything my mother taught
me, as her mother taught her, to my grandmother her grandmother ... as
though in a movie with a happy ending: me film director, me scenarist,
me at the lead role. The hero of my dearest people ... Me."
After three years and a half, questions after questions, the military tribunal in Guantanamo asked me:
If you will die here, what will you think at your last minutes?
I'm a husband and a father that is dying in the heroism's ways, I
answered and I asked the permission to put a question of my own.
If Guantanamo Bay were closed today, would you be a hero for your children?
I was proclaimed innocent. The lawyer proposed -- meantime we were
waiting for a state which will accept us -- to live in a hotel in the
Military Base of Guantanamo Bay. No way! We were put in a camp near to
the jail, which was called "Iguana Camp." We were nine. Sometimes, one
of my friends asked the soldiers about the time. Even today, I hadn't
understood why he needed to know the time. I asked the time ... I had
reasons ...
In Camp Iguana, there were iguanas. We fed them with bread, so they
began to enter in our dormitory. All of us needed their company.
Sometimes, when they were late, everyone missed them ...
One morning, I had an unforgettable surprise from my friends. They
gave to me cake from their meal, since that day was my twins' birthday.
The same day, in our dormitory entered two iguanas and I give to them
the cake ... thinking about my kids ... thinking about my end ... My
dream finished from Istanbul to Guantanamo, from my kids to iguanas ...
Finally in 2006 I arrived in Albania, my second homeland. The ring
of the telephone! What anxiety! Are they alive? For the first time, I
spoke with my wife and my kids. They were alive!
Every morning, I go out of my home before the sun rises and wait for
him with the hands up and empty. Since I'm still from the country where
the sun rises. I think about the family which perhaps I will never see
again and I resolve not to forget my vow, seven years ago, to be their
hero.
Yet, Mr. President, seventeen of my brothers remain in that prison
today. It is three years since I left the prison, and still they are
there. Please end their suffering soon. Your January 22 words were so
welcome to us, and I congratulate you for that and for your historic
election. But many months have passed.
For the four of us who remain in Albania (one of us is in Sweden
today, trying for asylum), life is very hard, and our future still
seems far away. I hope that one day soon your government and countrymen
will meet our seventeen brothers. Maybe when that day comes there would
be hope that we might come to America too.
Mr. President.
In life not everyone will reach his desired end. Perhaps you don't
know, but we are similar ... Except as to the end. Since you, like me,
without thinking abut the end of your long way, managed to be a hero
... I'm at Your side ... I'm proud of you ...
Mr. President.
Please allow me to share with You a thought. Gift a pair of shoes to
every child, to every woman, or every barefoot man since the barefoot
people doesn't think too much before walking on the dirty mud. Begin
with everything from above.
Very truly yours,
Abu Bakker Qassim
Tirana, Albania
March 24, 2009