Guantanamo prisoners coming to Uruguay.

Thanks for proposing this debate, and welcome to DDO, Anderson First I think we need some clarifications about the resolution of this debate. In my understanding, the resolution my opponent is trying to negate is that Uruguay should receive Guantánamo prisoners, and therefore I will assume the position in favor of this affirmation. As my opponent have already partly explained, six people who were held prisoner in the prison of the American naval base at the Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba were recently transferred to Uruguay in an offer from the Uruguayan president José "Pepe" Mujica to house those prisoners who had been rejected by all American states, which caused a problem for the American government, which has vowed to close the Guantánamo prison but has failed to do it so far due to the failure to find a place to send the remaining detainees[1]. I'd like to remind my opponent that Uruguay is a sovereign nation under a democratic regime, and therefore its government must be accountable to the concerns of its own population, whom it represents, and not to the paranoias of the Brazilian right-wing. Nevertheless, these worries may be quite possibly raised by Uruguayans themselves, and therefore may be considered a valid position only as far as they are expressed from the point of view of the Uruguayan society instead of the Brazilian one. Now, in order to understand the attitude of the Uruguayan government in relation to the Guantánamo detainees, we must evaluate the reasons that led it to make such a decision: 1) Soft Power Uruguay is a country of merely 3 million inhabitants, if it relied in the traditional attributes of hard power, that is, military and economic power, it would never be powerful enough to have a relevant position in the world, independently of how many weapons or wealth it had - it's just too small for that. Therefore, Uruguay can only hope to gain importance in the world stage by relying in soft power, that is, the power to lead by example rather than coercion, which can only be done by building and promoting a positive image based on credibility and admiration. No contemporary world leader have been more successful in raising its nation's soft power than Pepe Mujica, an evidence of that is the fact that a Serbian film director made a documentary on his life, describing him as the "last hero of politics"[2]. In this particular case, the goal is to raise Uruguay's prestige and credibility around the world by promoting it as a nation that is willing and able to solve other's problem, even if it's a problem that the most powerful country in the world (at least in hard power) created and is unable to solve by itself, as is the problem with Guantánamo's prisoners. 2) Pepe Mujuca's history as a prisoner One of the reasons why Pepe Mujica decided to help solving the Guantánamo prison problem may be his own past as a prisoner during Uruguay's military dictatorship, in which he was tortured and sent to solitary confinement in a hole in the ground for years, a situation that several of his friends didn't resist [3]. He probably must have become identified with the situation that the prisoners at Guantánamo, who were arrested without trials for an indefinite period. One of the men that is being received by Uruguay was submitted to force-feeding after he started a hunger strike in protest against his situation. Issues like this, which Mujica most probably also experienced or witnessed might have compelled him to take action regarding the situation in Guantánamo. 3) Human Rights issues The main reason that turned the Guantánamo Bay prison into a controversial issue and a big problem to the American government is that it violated all the traditions of the USA regarding the respect to the rule of law and due process, and also violates the following articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Righs: [4] V: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." VIII: "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law." IX: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile." X: "Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him." XI:"(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed." Since the people detained in Guantánamo were arrested arbitrarily and no independent and impartial trials have been granted to them, there is no place in the world where they could be hold prisoners, except at Guantánamo, where the most powerful military in the world guarantees that the US government has absolute right to act as it pleases, without any regards to the law, which is quite hypocritical considering that the American constitution was one of the first documents to introduce the ideas of rule of law, due process, fair trial and rejection of cruel and unusual punishments. By offering to receive the Guantánamo prisoners, the Uruguayan government also helps to boost its soft power by presenting itself as a country concerned with human rights issues, especially the ones related to people arrested without due process, something the president of Uruguay himself experienced. At the same time, it also conveys an underlying critic to the American government, once it shows that a small South American country may be more concerned with upholding human rights and due process than the country that introduced these ideas to the world. These are the main arguments that support the action taken by the Uruguayan government regarding Guantánamo prisoners; I'll save the rebuttals to my opponent's arguments to the next round. Sources: [1] - http://www.nytimes.com... [2] - http://www.elobservador.com.uy...-/ [3]-http://www.nytimes.com... [4] - http://www.un.org...