According to Cuba’s National News Agency, the statement explains that Cuba delivered a diplomatic note to the authorities at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana January 19 denouncing the arbitrary arrest, incarceration, and “torture and humiliating treatment” that the prisoners have been subjected to at Camp Delta in Guantánamo.

“The arbitrary detention of these foreign prisoners without the mediation of a legal trial, as well as the torture and degrading treatment to which they are subjected, constitute a gross violation of human rights,” the statement says. “Cuba has the total moral right afforded by an irreproachable history in this context and the right conferred on it to exercise sovereignty over all parts of Cuban territory to denounce these abuses and violations that the U.S. government is daily committing on the detainees on the Guantánamo Naval Base and to demand the end of these practices that violate international law.”

Part of Guantánamo Bay has been occupied by U.S. naval forces since the 1902 Platt Amendment to the Cuban constitution, which gave Washington an indefinite lease to this section of Cuba’s eastern province. Since workers and farmers overthrew the U.S-backed tyranny of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, the territory has been held by Washington despite the opposition of the Cuban people and their government.

The foreign ministry statement, which called for the immediate end to the abuse, was also broadcast on Cuban television.

The National News Agency said the Cuban foreign ministry had issued a statement Jan. 11, 2002, after Washington announced the setting up of the prison camp, saying that Havana “would not pose any obstacle to such an action, taking note with satisfaction U.S. public statements that such prisoners would be treated appropriately and humanely.”

Cuba’s foreign ministry said reports have since surfaced on widespread abuses against prisoners at Camp Delta. Media reports in December, for example, cited International Committee of the Red Cross reports that the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base was “tantamount to torture.”  
 
 
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