Perspectives on Global Issues » Adair Fincher

Ughyurs in Guantanamo – Follow-Up

Adair Fincher — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:42:13 +0000

Related to my last post, La Nacion, an Argentinean newspaper, has just published a piece on Abu Bakker Qassim, one of the five Uyghur men sent to Albania in 2006. You can read the translated version here. It’s an interesting, brief article on conditions in Guantanamo and the Uyghurs’ views on Obama.

The Guantánamo Uyghurs: Still Waiting Seven Years Later

Adair Fincher — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:26:01 +0000

Seven years after the Uyghurs, an oppressed Muslim minority group in the west of China, were detained, they are still in Guantánamo prison. They should have never been there in the first place. Although it was apparent in 2001 that the Uyghurs only enemy was the Chinese government, they were considered suspected enemy combatants. 5 of the 22 Uyghurs were cleared in the 2004 to 2005 Combatant Status Review Tribunals and were sent to Albania in 2006, the only country that would take them. The remaining 17 were cleared of enemy combatant status in September 2008 and ordered sent to supporters in the United States. The Bush administration turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Court has yet to make decision.

To U.S. credit, 18 of the Uyghurs were in alleged training camps in Tora Bora directly after 9-11 and were caught in U.S. bombing. Given that Tora Bora was the area that U.S. forces were targeting in their search for enemy combatants, it makes since that the Uyghurs would be detained for questioning. However, it was clear from the beginning that they were in Tora Bora seeking refuge from and training to combat Chinese oppression–if shooting a single AK-47 can count as training. They should have been released then.

Instead, they have lived a life of oppression under the Chinese, a life of squalor in Tora Bora and a life of abuse in Guantánamo prison. Those in Albania live in a refugee camp where armed guards patrol the parameters, and where they have said they find life much worse than in Guantánamo. Those in Guantánamo wait for their case to be reviewed, again, under the Obama administration. Their lawyers have said there is “literally” nothing left to review.

It all has to end soon, but the only question is “Where will they go?” China wants them back, but that is a no-go due to their oppressive record. No third country has stepped forward to volunteer to take them. And the U.S. has yet to step forward and make good on the September order. I just hope that they end up somewhere better than where they have been—and soon.

For more information on the Uyghurs in China, visit the Uyghur Human Rights Project where you will also find information on the Uyghurs in Guantánamo. For more information on the Uyghurs in Guantánamo, please see author and journalist Andy Worthington’s article.

Japan’s Former Comfort Women Denied

Adair Fincher — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:20:50 +0000

During the 15 Years War, known in Japan as the period from 1931-1945, nearly 200,000 women from throughout the Japanese Empire fell victim to Japan’s state-sponsored brothel system. Mostly Asian virgins, with the exception of the Dutch women in Indonesia, these women were often forced or tricked into becoming the euphemistically called “comfort women.” Their role included forced sex with 10-20 Japanese solders daily, along with one or two officers at night, from which they were often infected with STDs. They typically lived near or on battlefields, received little or no pay for their role and were regularly abused. An estimated third survived.

Those who survived often told no one of their experience for fear of the stigma attached to losing ones virginity prior to marriage. The women suffered in silence for nearly fifty years, until one elderly former comfort woman from South Korea bravely stepped forward to tell her story in 1991. Today, the elderly women who still survive fight in domestic, foreign and international courts for justice. They seek an apology from the Japanese government, recognition of their plight in Japanese schoolbooks and compensation for the hardship endured. The Japanese government steadfastly refuses, citing post-WWII bilateral treaties between it and the nations from which the women come, and the San Francisco Peace Treaty as a defense.

The former comfort women are old, dying daily. It appears as if the Japanese government is waiting until the last of the women die so that it can sweep this issue under the rug. As long as the comfort women are alive, however, they strive for justice, seeking to make their plight known around the world. The future looks bleak, but one can but hope that these women receive solace in their lifetime.

For more on the comfort women please see Dottie Horns’s article written for the University of Northa Carolina’s journal, Endeavor, or my article written for Chronogram.

Further sources on Comfort Women:

Links:

A list of links put together by Jerry D. Boucher and Chunghee Sarah Soh

Books:
Comfort Women by Yoshiaki Yoshimi

Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slaver & Prostitution during World War II & the US Occupation by Yuki Tanaka

Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George Hicks