Guantanamo Guantanamo

Guantanamo - Definition and Overview

Map of Cuba with the location of Guantanamo Bay indicated

Guantánamo is a city in southeast Cuba, capital of the Guantánamo Province. It has about 208,000 inhabitants and most of them live from producing sugarcane and cotton wool.

About 15 km away from the city lies the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, with its prisoner camps for alleged unlawful combatants captured in the "War on Terrorism", notably Camp X-Ray. The administration of president George W. Bush has claimed that the condition of extraterritoriality prevents prisoners in the naval base from having access to courts of law, but some U.S. courts, including the Supreme Court have denied this interpretation.

The detention conditions in the prisoners camps (reported by the ICRC to be "tantamount to torture") have introduced a sinister connotation to the name; for instance, "Guantanamo on the Hudson" was coined because of this.

Guantanamera ("The girl from Guantanamo") is perhaps the best known Cuban song and that country's most noted patriotic song.

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