Palau Will Take Chinese Muslims from Gitmo

by Maggie Temple-Smith | Palau, a "sparsley populated archipelago in the North Pacific," has agreed to accept the 17 Chinese now in prison at Guantanamo, The New York Times reports.  This is the first agreement reached since Obama took office -- so far, 100 countries have said, "No, thanks" when asked to accept Gitmo detainees.

[The agreement] gives Mr. Obama some relief on an issue that has become a political hot button among Congressional Republicans and even some Democrats, who have noisily protested against releasing what they call potentially dangerous extremists on American soil or transferring them to prisons in the United States.

The 17 Uighurs... have been in a state of limbo since fall, when a federal district court ordered that they be released in the United States and an appeals court overturned the ruling. The Bush administration said that it did not classify the men as enemy combatants.

The Chinese government accuses some Uighurs of leading an Islamic separatist movement in far western China, and Beijing has pressed many countries not to accept the detainees. Palau, which was a United States trust territory until its independence in 1994, maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than China, making it less vulnerable to pressure from Beijing.  (More at The New York Times)

At HuffPost, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, asks:  Is this a joke?

The Uighurs are Muslims from China's Xinjiang province, who were swept up in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and sold to U.S. forces by Pakistani villagers after fleeing from a run-down hamlet in which they had sought solace from their Chinese oppressors, or, in many cases, because they had found themselves unable to make their way to Turkey or Europe, to look for work, as they had originally intended.

Despite this, their proposed resettlement in the United States has caused panic attacks amongst politicians whose understanding of the prison's inhabitants has clearly gone no further than to curl up at Dick Cheney's knee, and say, "Gee, tell me again how the prisoners in Guantánamo are the most dangerous terrorists in the world?"

Apparently unable to understand that the majority of the prisoners in Guantánamo were bought for bounties, and were never adequately screened to determine their status, these fearful politicians continue to ignore the copious amounts of research demonstrating that all but a few dozen of the remaining 239 prisoners are either completely innocent men, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war in Afghanistan that began long before the 9/11 attacks, and had nothing to do with international terrorism.

Worthington finds Palau a "canny" option. 

A former U.S. trust territory, the island became independent in 1994, but retains close ties with its former masters, having signed a "Compact of Free Association" with the U.S., guaranteeing financial assistance in exchange for certain defense rights, More importantly, it maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, rather than with the People's Republic of China. The fact that it has no Uighur population and that its population of 21,000 includes no Muslims is, presumably, neither here nor there.  (More at Huffpost)

At Newshoggers, Anderson writes:

Just think about this for a moment.  As Obama tries to divest his administration of at least some of the detainee problem created by Bush, major western powers tremble, twitch, and balk at accepting Gitmo detainees, regardless the fact that most are innocent of any "suspicion," let alone actual crime against the US (the Uighurs are certainly of this category).  Americans quiver -- or are told to quiver -- at the thought that the "worst of the worst" could be moved to a Supermax prison run by the largest, most heavily weaponized prison-industrial complex on the planet.  But the tiny island nation of Palau opens its borders the Uighurs in a humanitarian gesture -- and probably some healthy remuneration from the White House -- and declares that it is proud to the receive these men, wrongly held and tortured for so long.

More blogger commentary at Memeorandum.....

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