Comment by ksec

One of the more surreal bits of the situation around Guantanamo bay is that the US was very careful to pay the lease amount(nowdays a trivial $4000 dollers) and Cuba was very careful about not cashing the payments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban%E2%80%93American_Treaty_...

Another weird thing was the subject of Cuban workers at the outpost. When relations soured between the countries Cuba wanted to isolate the base completely, And I have no clue about internal Cuban politics, but that stance was then lightened to "no new workers could be hired, but existing ones could stay employed" so for 59 years there was a steadily dwindling number of commuters from Guantanimo city to the base until the last one retired in 2012.

Absolutely nothing.

Not true at all, as regards the political aspects. There's also the people living there, or who rather had been until they were forcibly deported[0] long so long ago. And their situation also has very considerable legal and political significance. In regard to which there's also been an ICJ case with several very sharply-worded rulings starting 2019. It is also quite significant in regard to the global movement in favor of Right of Return[1], with implications for a certain third country[2] that not so coincidentally shares an excrutiatingly vexed history with both the islands' illegal occupiers up until the current date.

Of course, there are many in this crowd who at this point will say: "The fuck it does -- no one cares about the Chagossians and their long-standing claims for reparations for what the US and UK have done to them along with this pesky thing some people refer to as moral injury. And of course the ICJ doesn't matter anyway."

But I say: These things very much do matter. And it is the very fact that the US and UK thought (until recently with near certainty) that they could keep presenting a middle finger to these people and their claims, not to mention their simple dignity as human beings for so long without any repercussions is precisely why it matters, both politically and in legal terms.

And of course those who say the ICJ doesn't matter -- or that Right of Return doesn't matter -- don't matter anyway.

[0] - https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/02/15/thats-when-nightmare-s...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return

[2] - https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2024/0...

> US still has a base on the island of Cuba

Ah, you mean the illegal torture prison against which the Cuban government has been protesting since 1959.