Cinema: Road to Guantanamo

The new film by Michael Winterbottom, "Road to Guantanamo" is the winner of the Silver bear at the Berlin international film festival. It is a terrifying account of the story of three British citizens who were held for two years without charges at the Guantanamo military base. Known as the "Tipton three" in reference to their hometown in Britain, the three would be finally released without any formal charges ever being laid against them. The film has created significant controversy due to its critical approach towards the British and American administrations.

Part documentary (interviews of the Tipton three nowadays), part fiction, the film shows the sequence of events from the moment when the group set off for the wedding of one of them in Pakistan, to their side trip to Afghanistan just as the US began their invasion, to their capture by the northern Alliance, their imprisonment in Afghanistan and transfer to Guantanamo. They would remain imprisoned there for two years, until evidence emerged that they were still in Britain at the time they were accused of having been at a rally with Osama bin Laden. The real Tipton Three tell their stories in interviews throughout the film, but the work's strength comes from juxtaposing those parts with the dramatic episodes in which actors play the men's ordeal, confusion and captivity in brutal detail. Winterbottom's perspective is quite precise. Early on, the film shows a clip from a joint news conference that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair held in 2003. There, Mr. Bush says of Guantanamo prisoners: "The only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people, and we look forward to working closely with the Blair government to deal with the issue". At another clip Bush declared that those people are bad people and they do not share the same values as we do. The American military and Bush may be the film's "bad guys", but Winterbottom makes it clear that the Blair government is also complicit and British have done little to help the "Tipton three".

As the New York Times wrote, "Winterbottom (also the master director of works like “Welcome to Sarajevo” and "Tristram Shandy") places viewers in a world where one man at Guantánamo is kept outdoors in a chain-link cage, and another is shackled in a painful posture in a dark room and bombarded with loud noise. The film doesn't question the men's version of events, but it creates a believable story with staggering force."

The film also puts the accent in other aspects of the "war on terror" such as what we could call the "War on Language". One of the less noted aspects of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror" is the government's simultaneous War on Language, a "calculated use of Orwellian double speak". After 9-11, the invasion of other countries became a 'preemptive strike', the capture and torture of civilians became 'extraordinary rendition'. And in the film we can read the sign on the front of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay which reads 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom'. Small comfort to the some 450 'unlawful combatants' who after four years still languish inside, without any access to basic human rights. Those running the prison decided to re-label suicide attempts as 'manipulative self-injurious behaviour' or 'SIBs', to euphemise still further. And when recently three prisoners committed suicide, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of Guantanamo, termed the suicides an act of 'asymmetrical warfare' against the United States…

The Department of Defense's attitude towards suicide attempts by Guantanamo's detainees is a particularly shocking example of the Bush's administration approach. Officially, only 41 attempts have been admitted by the US government. However, prisoners who have been released, claim that figure is laughably low. Recently three prisoners, two Saudis and a Yemeni, finally succeeded where so many before had failed, and took their own lives. Without access to family or lawyers, after over four years in US custody, they knotted bedsheets together and hung themselves from the grills above their cells. These suicides have contributed to increase national and international pressure from groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to close the prison. European leaders have also renewed criticism of the facility and pressed the point with Bush when they met him in Vienna for the last European Union on June 21. But many European governments are also in the spotlight for having allegedly authorised illegal flights carrying prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantanamo and are even suspected of also having allowing secret illegal prisoner camps in their territory.

The White House says detainees are treated fairly and humanely, but lawyers for the detainees say they should be charged with crimes or released. So far, out of the nearly 800 detainees in Guantanamo, only ten have been charged with crimes and no one convicted.

To complete the story of the "Tipton three", a US District Court judge has ruled that they have the right to file a lawsuit against their US captors in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 10 Million dollar lawsuit claims their treatment at the prison was in direct violation of their right under U.S. law to practice their religious faith. American lawyers plan to file to the lawsuit against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 10 U.S. military commanders on behalf of their three British clients, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed. The judge ruled that the case falls within the jurisdiction granted by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and stated that the act, which covers all U.S. possessions and territories, also applies to the camps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.