Who owns guantanamo

The base offered steady jobs at wages far higher than those on local sugar plantations. President Lyndon Johnson ordered most Cuban workers fired to make the base more self-sufficient. Jamaican and later Filipino guest laborers were brought in to take their place. Today, these guest workers live in trailers and old barracks on the base and do everything from construction and food services to laundry.

Many are paid less than the U. Guantanamo Bay is a mostly Constitution-free zone. He observed that the working conditions of Cubans employed at Guantanamo Bay complied with neither Cuban nor American labor laws. In , U. More recently, in the s, the Coast Guard intercepted thousands of Haitians fleeing post-coup political unrest in boats and brought them to Guantanamo Bay.

Most were denied asylum and sent home. Though they had been granted asylum, immigration officials would not admit them into the United States because of their health status. The Haitians were admitted to the United States, but the unused facilities remained. Dozens of people are still detained at Guantanamo Bay. This set the stage for the Bush administration to transform Guantanamo Bay into a prison for alleged enemy combatants after the Sept.

Conditions there have included imprisonment in cages, sensory deprivation and forced feedings — treatment that many believe amounts to torture. Nearly prisoners were released to their home countries or resettled elsewhere.

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If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Related Stories. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription. Need help? Visit our Help Center. Go here to connect your wallet. The US authorities have a shameful record of treatment of employees at the base, there have been periodic mass layoffs, which could only be avoided by Cubans renouncing their citizenship.

Which is why the US has never even entered into any discussions over a possible eventual handover, despite repeated requests from the Cuban government. Even during the Missile Crisis in the US administration was not prepared to talk about handing back Guantanamo, but was prepared to take the world to the brink of nuclear war. Yet, according to international law, the United States has no right to still be at the base.

International law establishes consent as the basis for any legal obligation resulting from an agreement, where is the consent in any of the agreements concerning Guantanamo?.

The lease was forced onto a government that had been installed as puppets of the American regime and remained there under threat of military intervention. And finally, quite simply it is absurd to think that the owner of anything that is leased cannot recover it at a given time, as any lease is per se, temporary. Most of the information above has been taken from the book Guantanamo; The Bay of Discord, by Roger Ricardo, available on www.

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