The fuller picture of the brutal treatment of the 300 men that has been made public this week with the piercing of a press blackout gives working people ammunition to expose U.S. imperialism and demand the prisoners be released.

The men, charged with no crime and not afforded protection under the Geneva Convention, are subject to treatment reminiscent of the hated chain gangs that until recently were another widespread institution of U.S. capitalist justice. Military officials who run the prison casually admit that even in their eyes some of those incarcerated are innocent people, caught up in the dragnet.

Given the flagrant violations of elementary human rights at Camp X-Ray, the silence about the situation among political forces in the United States is nothing short of an outrage. With some isolated exceptions, few have dared challenge Washington's justifications for its right to arrest, kidnap, and put these men in open air cages. Early complaints from Washington's imperialist rivals in Europe died off long ago as well.

The prison camp, now undergoing a major expansion, is a provocation against the Cuban Revolution. The Cuban government has for decades demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces. As Cuban president Fidel Castro says in a speech reprinted in this issue, the camp represents "the illegal and arbitrary occupation of a piece of our territory."

This provocation is combined with the U.S. government's frame-up and jailing of five Cuban revolutionaries, fighters who Castro appropriately calls "heroes of the republic of Cuba" who were "defending their people to the death."

These events help show that what U.S. imperialism does abroad is an extension of what is happening in the United States; and what is happening abroad is a technicolor version of what the U.S. rulers will seek to impose on workers and farmers at home.

The treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo goes hand in hand with the accelerated attacks on workers' rights by the employers and their government, both done under the guise of "keeping America safe from terrorism." This includes police searches, broadening authority for cops to spy on working people, jailings and detentions of immigrants and others, firing of workers for their political views, and attempts to refurbish the use of the death penalty.

The announcement by the Justice Department that it intends to seek the execution of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is facing charges of conspiracy in relation to the September 11 events, should be a warning to all working people. When the U.S. rulers can't prove a person actually did something--as in the case of the five Cubans and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg--they weave a conspiracy frame-up on their victim.

The U.S. ruling class is the number one enemy of working people in the United States and around the world. They have no moral, legal, class, or historic right to keep the Guantánamo prisoners in barbaric imprisonment. Every working person, defender of democratic rights, and fighter against police brutality and other injustices can join in demanding their immediate and unconditional release!
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. press blackout at Guantánamo pierced, brutal treatment exposed
Fidel Castro speaks in defense of 'the five Cuban heroes imprisoned by the empire'  
 
 
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