Guantanamo's side effects

Relations between China and the United States are so complex and intertwined that even American policies that stem from purely domestic issues may impact on Sino-American relations. One example is US President Barack Obama's order, issued two days after he assumed office, to shut down detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.

Whether to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was very much a policy debate in the US. The Bush administration moved prisoners captured in Afghanistan into Guantanamo and asserted that detainees, who were classified as "enemy combatants", were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Americans commandeered Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, where they kept suspected insurgents. By early 2004, accounts surfaced of physical, psychological and sexual abuse of prisoners. Photographs were released showing naked inmates stacked onto a pile; others showed inmates being threatened by guard dogs.

Both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo became synonymous with the torture and abuse of prisoners, leading to the decline of America's moral authority. Abu Ghraib was closed in 2006.

To restore America's international image, many demanded the closing of Guantanamo's detention facilities. Both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates called for this.

Under Obama's executive order, the Guantanamo facilities have to close by January 22, 2010.

This means that the 245 or so inmates there have to be released or moved. The US itself is unwilling to take any of them, even ones that it considers to no longer be a threat. Instead, it has been calling on other countries to take them.

Among the inmates were 17 Chin-ese nationals, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group known as Uighurs, who live in Xinjiang, in western China.

The 17 Uighurs were among 22 captured by US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 and taken to Guantanamo. After years of confinement, the US government determined the Uighurs were not 'enemy combatants' and cleared them for release.

However, the US would not take them and rejected the option of sending them back to China for fear that they may be subject to persecution. So Washington had to ask other countries to take them.

In 2006, Albania accepted five. Beijing denounced the transfer as a violation of international law, saying that they should have been returned to China. That still left the problem of the 17 remaining Uighurs unresolved.

While all Guantanamo detainees have to be released or transferred by January 2010, there is a different deadline where the Uighurs are concerned.

That is because the Uighurs have instituted a court case. Last October, a US district court judge ruled that they should be released in the United States. That ruling was overturned by an appeals court. However, the Uighurs' lawyers want to take their case to the US Supreme Court.

The court is scheduled to consider the matter on Thursday. Apparently, the Obama administration does not want to take a chance on what the court might decide and wants to see to it that the matter is resolved before then.

Meanwhile, China continues to demand that the Uighurs, whom it calls 'suspected terrorists', be sent home. Beijing also put pressure on other countries not to take them.

Last Wednesday, Washington suddenly announced that four Uighurs had been resettled in Bermuda. However, Bermuda is a British territory and the decision was made without London's knowledge. Whether Britain will allow them to remain is not clear.

At the same time, Washington prevailed on the Pacific island nation of Palau, a former US trust territory, to take the remaining 13 Uighurs. Palau, which recognises Taiwan, does not have diplomatic relations with Beijing and so is less vulnerable to Chinese pressure.

There, for the moment, matters rest. It is unclear what the Uighurs, whose homeland is largely desert and mountains, will do on Palau, a tropical island known for its beautiful beaches and for snorkelling.

But, at least, they will no longer be a live issue between the US and China - that is, not until something else happens. And, while China insists on its principles of sovereignty and national integrity, it is pragmatic enough to let sleeping dogs lie.

However, other issues will undoubtedly continue to pop up and bedevil the American-Chinese relationship, even issues that on the surface look like they have nothing to do with China. That is because relations between the two countries now cover almost every conceivable aspect of life, not just politics and economics.

- OpinionAsia, 2009

Frank Ching is a Hong-Kong based commentator.