The World Knows: Council of Churches Calls for Rights for Guantánamo Inmates

The main global coalition of non-Catholic Christians denounced U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay naval base, Reuters reported yesterday.  The World Council of Churches, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, called on the Bush administration to stop violating international law and grant full legal rights to the “over 600 foreign nationals, mostly Muslims” illegally held at the interrogation camp on the base. In a statement announced after a meeting Monday morning, the Council’s Central Committee deplored that prisoners “are held without due process and in total violation of the norms and standards of international humanitarian and human rights law.”  Although the Catholic Church is not part of the World Council of Churches, member churches and associate members (denominations with less than 25,000 congregants but at least 10,000) still include 28 non-Catholic congregations and associations in Latin America and 15 in the Caribbean.

The World Council of Churches’ 342-church total membership also includes the 36 Protestant, Orthodox, and Afro-American denominations of the U.S. National Council of Churches (NCCC-USA), which supported the statement and has already been campaigning for the detainees to be granted due legal process.  The statement recorded the central committee’s appreciation and encouragement of "the important work being done by the NCCC-USA in its endeavours to struggle for the rule of law and secure due process" for people suffering "unconscionable and illegal detention."  The U.S. National Council filed an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, that won inmates at Guantánamo the right to challenge their detention in U.S. federal court.

This struggle for legal rights is described in Guantánamo: What the World Should Know now continues in the world of public opinion and action and in federal court, where the legal process is on hold following conflicting rulings as to whether the Supreme Court ruling will have any practical meaning for the imprisoned.

The real key is for local action, noted an article on the World Council of Churches gathering.  The central committee meeting also brought statements calling for international talks on ending the U.S.-led military occupation of Iraq and the removal of military bases there, for refractory countries especially the U.S. to accept the International Criminal Court, and for respect and preservation of indigenous languages.

"All of these statements are, by nature, hoped they will be used by local churches," public issues committee moderator Rev Canon Dr Trond Bakkevig of the Church of Norway said, adding that he hoped that they were written in such a way that they could be useful.

The Central Committee’s statement on Guantánamo directly asked all the Council's churches to "educate and conscientise their congregations to the situation of those presently under detention in Guantanamo Bay and to fulfil their responsibility as a community of faith in Christ by calling for the release of those being held in detention under inhuman conditions."

(UPDATE 2005-2-23: Full text of statement available at WCC website.)