By Reynaldo Santana López AIN Special Service

The illegal US naval base in the eastern part of Cuba has been turned into a torture center since 2000, condemned by the international community. The Cuban people repudiate the military presence in the enclave and demand the return of their territory. This is a story that has to be told and dates back to the early 20th century.

The world reads every day about the torture and mistreatment of over 500 detainees from 26 countries at the hands of US military personnel in the naval base that the US maintains in eastern Guantánamo. Since

2002 these horrors have taken place in that part of Cuba, illegally occupied by Washington. Because of such horrors, which have been repudiated the world over; the Guantánamo base is constantly news in the international press.

Why do the Cuban people call the site as illegally occupied?  The story dates back to the early 20th century.

The Americans discovered Guantánamo, and will never give up possession of it!?, said Cuban patriot Manuel Sanguily to his friend Enrique Trujillo  when in 1898 he read in a New York daily about the landing of a platoon of  US marines in Guantánamo Bay at the beginning of the Hispano-Cuban-American  war.

Such a transparent expression was only logical, because for a country with expansionist ideas like the United States, it was vital to have control over that piece of the southeastern region. A perfect bay (one of the largest of its type in the world), Guantánamo has a length of 5.2 kilometers, deep waters, 20 interior keys, numerous docks, and has the capacity to hold over 40 ships at a time.

Located close to the Windward Passage, where any vessels from moving from north to south must pass, in the center of the Caribbean, it is a perfect point to control the Panama isthmus. There, since the end of the 19th century, the planned building of the inter-ocean waterway was underway. The US had long dreamt of and finally did control the rights to the canal at the beginning of the last century.

IN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

With an area of 117.6 square kilometers, almost a third of the municipality of Caimanera, Guantánamo became a US naval base in the early 1900?s due to a permanent treaty imposed in the Cuban Constitution.

The clause, known as the Platt Amendment, was approved by a Constituent Convention without any legal powers or governmental status to settle any type of relationship with a foreign government and much less in detriment of national sovereignty.

This became one of the first major legal violations. It was preceded by pressure from the US interventionalist troops who threatened to remain indefinitely in Cuba thwarting the dreams of independence for which its sons had fought for almost three decades if they did not accept the motion to the fundamental law of the island.

In reference to this, the International Convention on the Law of Treaties held in Vienna, Austria in 1969, Article 52 declared all treaties whose consent is reached by threats or use of force, as in this case, to be annulled.

Additionally, the renting of Cuban land and waters by the US government for the establishment of the Guantánamo Naval Base, according to the Permanent Treaty of 1903 and the Treaty of Relations of 1934, substituting the former, was set up for the time it was needed by the Americans?. As a date of return of the base was not included, and there was a clause that the US presence was indefinite, the legality for these types of agreements was violated.

It is legally absurd that the owner (in this case Cuba) was unable to recover its own territory. In fact there is no rent as such and it was a real purchase of a piece of Cuban land by means of a lifetime payment, a sort of forced rent (the Revolutionary government has refused to receive any payment for the occupation of the territory since 1959, because by doing so, Havana would be recognizing the legality of the enclave).

According to the 1934 Treaty of Relations between Cuba and the United States, Havana cannot exercise its sovereignty over that part of its own territory.

Without all of the previous elements, it would be sufficient to show the illegality of the US Naval Base in Guantánamo, with Chapter One, Article 11, of the current Cuban Constitution which says: “The Republic of Cuba repudiates and considers illegal and annulled the treaties, pacts or concessions convened under conditions of inequality or ignore or reduce its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

This is stated in the island’s Magna Carta, approved in 1976 through a popular referendum, with the participation of over 98 percent of the eligible voters.

OTHER ASPECTS OF THE ILLEGALITY

Several of the aspects included in the Treaty of Relations between Cuba and the United States in 1934 (which according to the United States protects the existence of the base) are not valid. For example, the document highlights “the desire to strengthen friendship ties? with the Cuban people.

Lets us take a look at some examples of this “friendship”:

-The use of the military enclave for the supply of gasoline for the planes of Dictator Fulgencio Batista, who bombarded the defenseless civilian population in the western mountains in 1958.

-The use of the military enclave as a source of tension, threats and provocation against Cuba, immediately after the triumph of the

Revolution: including the planning of possible attacks against the lives of leaders of the Revolution, which were undertaken in the enclave,

-The use of the military enclave to fire on Cuban border guards causing the death of several soldiers.

Article 62 of the International Convention on the Law of Treaties, points out in one of its clauses: “a fundamental change of circumstances that occurs after the existence of an agreement on a treaty makes it annulled”.

Who would dare deny that the circumstances in which the Treaty on Relations between Cuba and the United States are radically different at this moment?

Since January 2002, the government of the United States has begun to use the naval base installations as a jail for alleged prisoners of war from Afghanistan, Iraq, and European and Arab nations.

What does the decision of the US authorities in turning the base into an international torture center against prisoners that remain in a legal limbo have to do with the circumstances that gave birth to the naval enclave?

With this decision, the US is violating the Convention on Coal and Naval Stations, signed in February of 1903 between the US and Cuba at the time, in unequal and disadvantageous conditions for the island, whose independence had been stripped away by the Platt Amendment.

 According to Article 2 of the Convention, the US government committed itself to “doing all it can to use the base exclusively as a coal and naval stations and for no other use.”

The Cuban government has reiterated that it will never renounce sovereignty over the piece of usurped territory and is willing to resolve this problem through diplomatic channels by means of current international laws.

WHAT IS THE NAVAL BASE?

It occupies a surface area of 117.6 square kilometers. Of this, there are 49 square kilometers of firm land, 38.8 of water and 29.4 swamps.

Throughout the perimeter of the base there is a 28-kilometer long fence. There are two airports: McCall and Leward Point. There is a water desalination plant capable of processing over one million gallons a day.

-Cuba has not cashed in one of the checks that the US has placed in a Swiss bank account for the last 40 years as payment for the “rent” of the base. It amounts to a little over 4,000 dollars a year, which means less than 30 dollars per square kilometer.

-For Cuba the amount does not determine its attitude, but its rejection of the imposition and illegality of this military installation.

-According to US analysts, the base lacks any strategic military importance for the country. The Cuban government has reiterated that it will never renounce sovereignty of a part of its territory, and its willingness to solve this problem by means of diplomatic channels in compliance with current international law.

(AIN) 26-02-2006