Location
Girvetz 2320
The Guantánamo detention facility, located on the US naval base on the south side of Cuba, is the most iconic manifestation of the US “war on terror.” It symbolizes broader and durable patterns of expanded executive power, law-defying policies that have stripped certain classes of people of a right to rights, and the routinization and valorization of extreme cruelty. But Guantánamo is more than one prison in one place. It has inspired other governments to “Gitmo-ize” their prisoner policies in copycat defiance of international law, thus contributing directly to the gutting of hard-won commitments to humanitarian norms. This is what Lisa Hajjar calls “the Guantánamo phenomenon.”