Since the first detainees were shipped to Guantánamo Bay in January 2002, media coverage of the US military prison has focused on it as a legal quandary and political dilemma. Details on life within its walls, on the other hand, have only dribbled out. Reporters’ access there is highly restricted, and few journalists — the Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg foremost among them — have stayed on the beat long enough to begin understanding prison culture there.
Vice aims to help fill that hole with a 31-part project published Monday, 2,118 days since President Barack Obama signed an executive order pledging to close the facility. “Behind the Bars: Guantánamo Bay” includes writing from three inmates, profiles of an imam and prosecutor who worked at the prison, and an essay by a one-time guard, among other pieces.
“It’s been a big issue for so long because it deserves to be a big issue,” said Alex Miller, global head of content at Vice. Last week, the US military released a Kuwaiti man held at Guantánamo, without trial, for 13 years. Questions on the practice of force-feeding prisoners have not died down. And the recent election of a Republican-controlled Senate rekindled some talk of whether Obama could shutter the prison in his final two years in office.
“There are some very, very diverse opinions on this,” Miller said. “Is it daunting? I guess in a way. But we’re trying to put kind of a human face on what has been an enormous, hot-button political issue for a long time.”
The Guantánamo Bay project is the first installation in a new Vice series on prisons around the world, dubbed “Behind the Bars.” Miller said Friday that the detention facility in Cuba was a natural choice to begin the series because “it is, without a doubt, the most famous prison in the world.” He added that forthcoming installments will be published quarterly, at most.
Vice indeed addresses a handful of legal and political issues in its piece, namely why the prisoners who’ve been cleared for release — a majority of the 148 remaining — are still in custody. The project’s lone flaw is that it’s light on reporting. It partially makes up for this shortfall with unique angles that include the psychology of growing up as a prisoner and how to make a detainee’s favorite dish from home. Its real strengths lie elsewhere, however. Fourteen pieces are dedicated to the prison’s banned books, with academics, journalists, and authors reflecting on why they might have made the list. The collection of opinions makes up a useful self-examination of the political culture surrounding the so-called “War on Terror.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the project is writing from three current detainees, all of whom have been cleared for release. While such pieces aren’t unprecedented, publishing five at once — and all in one place — gives readers a clear look into the mental effects of imprisonment. Vice worked with Reprieve, a London-based organization that represents more than a dozen detainees, to coordinate work on the first-person essays.
“I have a name but sometimes I almost forget it,” writes Younous Chekkouri, a Moroccan prisoner who was cleared for release in 2010. “No one here calls me by my name, because my world is GTMO.”
With other, more frightening observations throughout, Vice’s take on Guantanamo indeed adds value to long-running conversations about the military prison. Miller said the news organization would take similar looks at facilities in the United Kingdom, Russia, and elsewhere as part of its “Behind the Bars” series. But he was short on additional details.
“That would take the fun out of things, now wouldn’t it?” he said.
David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti.