Guantanamo has become notorious mainly due to reports of the terrible torture of prisoners. The employees of the institution violated all international conventions on human rights, humiliating the honor and dignity of prisoners, who are often not proven to be guilty. This institution of U.S intelligence is not the only one of its kind in the world, but thanks to a series of scandals in the media, Gitmo, as it is known in the English-speaking world, is now the most notorious and ominous prison.
The Guantanamo prison is located on the US military base in Cuba; the USA has rented the area since 1903. After the establishment of the prison, the Cuban authorities began to demand the closure of the base, using the argument that the conditions of rent had been violated. On March 20th-21st, Barack Obama plans to visit Cuba. The normalization of relations with the “island of freedom” is perceived as one of Obama's diplomatic victories. The promise to close the base will be well received in Cuba and will contribute to further rapprochement with the United States.
Barack Obama, when running for the first time as the US president, promised that one of his first decisions, as head of state, would be to close Guantanamo. As an argument, he said that the existence of the prison is contrary to the fundamental underlying values of the United States. Today, near the end of Obama’s second presidential term, Guantanamo has still not been closed, and is unlikely to be closed anytime soon.
The Representatives of the Republican Party have, traditionally, criticized the proposal. They fear the unpredictable consequences of “dangerous terrorists moving to the USA because the country with the most powerful repressive apparatus in the world will not be able to trace several dozen prisoners. In addition, Republicans criticized Obama by saying that by closing Guantanamo, he will give the US military base to Cuba. At the same time, it does not mention the story of how aggressively the United States took away this territory from Cuba.
One of the objectives of this initiative is to create the image in the media that the Democrats feel pity and take care of all, even terrorist prisoners, and that the Republicans, in this case, are unscrupulous hawks, ready to drown the world in blood for the sake of the security of their country. The Republican President George W. Bush, in his tenure, also offered to close Guantanamo, but then harshly criticized the representatives of the Democratic Party. In other words, the existence of the prison is beneficial to both factions of the American elite, and therefore it is unlikely to be closed.
