Catching up on some news while watching tonight’s Thrashers game and came across a brief story about an inmate in Guantanamo. It didn’t stir up any thoughts different from what I wrote about nearly a year ago, but one Kafka-esque detail caught my attention.
This particular story focuses on one Abdul Helil Mamut who was moved from a medium security camp to a new high security camp. The article describes him as an ethnic Uighur from China and while it doesn’t say why he is considered an unlawful enemy combatant (other than that he was picked up in Pakistan), it mentions this little fact:
Uighurs have been accused by China of leading a violent Islamic separatist movement in the western province of Xinjiang, though their supporters say Beijing uses claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment.
So odds are he’s being held because China says he’s a terrorist. Why don’t we go ahead and deport him to China then? Because “[u]nder U.S. law, [Uighurs] cannot be deported to China because of concern they could face political persecution.” Wait. We’re persecuting him and denying him his human rights because of his political opposition to China, but we can’t legally deport him because he may be persecuted for political reasons?
How many days until we get a new president?