No Confidence for Bermuda Premier on Uighurs

By accepting four Uighur detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison last week without following the proper legal steps or even conducting a security review, Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown violated his sworn duty to uphold the rule of law and protect our citizens. That is why, for the first time in decades, the Bermuda Parliament on Friday will consider a no confidence motion to replace a premier.

This course of action became inevitable this week when our Police Commissioner and our British Governor, Sir Richard Gozney, revealed there was no security review of the Uighurs. While Dr. Brown initially claimed to our Parliament there had been a security check before they arrived, we now know our police were only given non-classified dossiers on the Uighurs' backgrounds -- and even those were not provided until a day after they had arrived on our island.

Let me be clear: If these four men were improperly rounded up in Pakistan eight years ago and wrongly held at Guantanamo Bay, then that is an injustice and they deserve a home. The U.S. mainland was a possibility for them, but your Congress put it to a vote and said no.

We suspect we know how Americans would feel if President Obama held a press conference one day, without a word to even his cabinet, and said he'd decided the Guantanamo prisoners were going to be settled in the U.S. You would be very angry and your elected representatives would make him back down in a big hurry.

We feel angry in the same way. Bermudians should have been consulted in the same way America was consulted -- through its elected representatives. To commit our island to such a controversial arrangement without any consultation is unacceptable. To do so as if you answer to no one violates a fundamental principle of all democracies.

Dr. Brown should have consulted Bermudians and the British before he made a deal with the United States, even if the burden of secrecy meant he wasn't able to do more than persuade colleagues in his own cabinet and our British Governor to support him. That would have kept him in line with our Constitution which reserves for the British Government final say in our foreign policy as well as internal and external security. That's the law.

Dr. Brown's disregard for the constitution and laws he is sworn to uphold may reflect his desire for Bermuda to be independent of Britain, even though more than two thirds of Bermudians prefer to retain our current constitutional arrangement with Britain.

The Uighar controversy has been made more troubling for Bermudians because Dr. Brown has not been straight with them. He says the White House approached him about giving them a home, while his Immigration minister says Bermuda's offer was unsolicited. Dr. Brown says there was no quid pro quo with the U.S. Government, while the same minister claims the Uighurs were accepted to curry favour with the Obama Administration.

And then there is the critical matter of the security review that Dr. Brown last week claimed had already taken place when he told Bermudians that our police concluded the Uighurs represented "absolutely no security risk". In fact, the police categorized them as "high" risk.

As opposition leader, I have seen how vigorous debate using all available information can foster the best government decisions. Dr. Brown betrayed that practice by not discussing with his elected cabinet ministers or the British government his side-deal with the Obama Administration to accept the Uighur nationals who needed a home.

Bermuda is a democracy much like yours, though ours has an English flavor. We believe our leaders, like yours, should follow the rule of law rather deciding on their own what the law should be. It is that kind of reckless behavior we will try to stop this Friday with a no-confidence vote.

Comments

[bdaved]

From the Christian Science Monitor online, May 12, 2009, "Diplomatic memos reveal Chinese effort to block Guantanamo prisoner's asylum bid" by Ritt Goldstein:
"Uighurs are facing similar issues regarding their homeland, China's Xinjiang Province, as those endured by Tibetans, says Central Eurasian expert Gardner Bovingdon. He says China's playing of the terrorist card is part of "its strategy for exploiting the 'global war on terror' to serve its particular purposes in Xinjiang, and also abroad-- wherever Uighurs exist in diaspora."­"
"Professor Bovingdon, of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, explains China's efforts as attempts "to nullify Uighur political activism inside, and outside, Xinjiang." He views such efforts as part of a campaign "to delegitimize" Uighur groups, noting Chinese attempts to "depict Uighur separatists, and even Uighur dissidents, who are not violent and do not explicitly advocate independence for Xinjiang, as "terrorist­s.""
http://csmonitor.com/2009/0512/po6s13-woeu.html?page=2

[bdaved]

A correction to the URL, with my apologies:
http://csmonitor.com/2009/0512/p06s13-woeu.html?page=2

[S1m0n]

The US government's actions in this are as shameful and as cowardly as any that body has ever made.

[originaldna]

The real shame here is that Bermuda is still under British rule.

[LMPE]

This would have never happened had the US prosecuted them immediately instead of letting them waste away for seven years.

Maybe in Bermuda they'll simply disappear like everything seems to do in the Bermuda Triangle.

[S1m0n]

Right. Of course, seven years ago, they were just as innocent as they are now, so the dilemma the US faces would have been the same.

[WowJones]

Four guys

[DWX]

Obviously, the Bermudian government is more afraid of its tourism industries getting affected. They (government) don't care about what's right or wrong, rather just the "bottom line".

[MAragon]

Kind of nice seeing these guys just having an ice cream cone. They're human too, you know. In China, they'd be dead.

[DWX]

This is how you turn someone into a hateful terrorist. First by incarcerating them for close to a decade, followed by an “oops”. Then upon freeing them, immediately kick them out of their new sanctuary driven only by “prejudice”.

[Maverick85]

DWX--

As always, your missives are vapid and tedious.

Since you care passionately about the poor Uighurs, I suggest you, yourself, provide them shelter, food, love, and protection from HATRED.

[Spencaa]

You people are fools, attacking the Parliament there. Who care's if it's 'Just', he didn't do the right legal thing to be allowed to do it. Duh. Geez.

[Jaywalkker]

As moral as it may be, the Premier operated unilaterally and against the laws of his land. That is the issue. The article doesn't say anything like, Premier will face a vote of no confidence AND the Uighurs are on the first catamaran back to the states. He operated w/out oversight or permission per the laws of Bermuda's constitution.

This is almost the equivalent of Guam accepting madrassa schools from Lebanon to be built without US knowledge. Does anybody here want Puerto Rico to unilaterally allow N. Korea to build a dockyard for trade? Should the Virgin Islands accept Palestinian refugees without telling the US?

[DWX]

This is how you turn someone into a hateful terrorist. First by incarcerating them for close to a decade, followed by an “oops”. Then upon freeing them, immediately kick them out of their new sanctuary driven only by “prejudice” because these men look Muslim..

[atlanta1962]

Turn?

[bdaved]

You're right. Even the events around their incarceration failed to make terrorists out of them.

[Jaywalkker]

news flash, those men are Muslim.

[MrBadger]

I'm sorry but "get a life"! Sure the US should have let them in. I'm ashamed that we have been so cowardly in not accepting responsibility for the huge mistakes that the Bush administration made with respect to detainees. As to a "security check" - what more could you ask for than the conclusion by a repressive regime that was willing to resort to torture to find something wrong with them - that they were in fact innocent?

[Ira7]

Bermuda finally has a chance to do something good--and they're turning it into a mess by making such a big deal out of these four guys. Their police department can't keep track for 4 Asian-looking guys? On an island THAT tiny?

The PM might be removed, but he did the right thing. Those who are supporting his ouster are doing the disgusting thing.

What the hell have you contributed to the world anyway besides shorts and taking money from cruise travelers? And you can't even do THIS!?

[pupnyny]

They should be sent back to where we KIDNAPPED THEM! OR allowed to llive in the U.S.

How far have we come as a country when we have people in jail for YEARS who are guilty of nothing!!!!!!!!! And it does not even bother people other than to say "you cant come to the U.S."

[JulieSA]

They don't want to go to Pakistan, and congress voted against having them released here.

[pghnappyrhino]

there is a uigher community virginia, i believe, that was willing to take them in.


if we can't accept them here, why SHOULD we expect others to do it? this situation is of our making, shouldn't finding a solution (and not paying other countries to take them) be our responsibility?

[Seaweed]

Dear Bermuda: You are right. We SHOULD have taken them in the USA, but we are fighting our own right-wing cowards. You guys have rocks. And its very much appreciated and admired. The people here in the USA who keep the stupid here terrified, they are not appreciated and admired. They are disgusting fear mongering cowards. So don't be like them.