Summary:

Recently an art exhibit in New York featured works that were created by inmates that were detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba under suspicion of their ties to terrorist acts committed against the United States and their allies. After the exhibit garnered significant attention from the media, the Pentagon decided to review the way that they handle prisoners’ art. Up until this review the art was allowed to be released through the inmates’ lawyers after it went through a thorough security review. Now, after the review, they have decided that the art is not the inmates’ property and cannot be released from the prison.

Analysis:

It appears that there is some discrimination taking place. As the author eludes the Pentagon may have issued its new policy as some form of psychological warfare. She quotes Ms. Thompson, a professor of art crime at John Jay College; “The idea of trying to dispirit someone by destroying what they’ve made, even if the subject is, on its surface, innocuous, is very common in warfare.” This highlights one of the main qualms that people have had about the detention facility being placed off of US soil in the first place. It allows the US Government to pick and choose which “rights” it is willing to afford the detainees. They can willfully discriminate between them and prisoners held at US detention facilities within the United States and its territories.