Prisoner • U.S.
Army Chaplain James Yee spoke to
students Tuesday about his time spent
in Guantanamo
Bay and how he himself was wrongly
accused of being a terrorist spy.
Tracey Roman / Online Forty-Niner
Chaplain speaks about Guantanamo Bay
By Sandra Porter
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
Former Muslim Chaplain for the U.S. Army James Yee spoke at a forum sponsored
by Cal State Long Beach Muslim Student Association (MSA) Tuesday. Yee discussed
his experiences as the assigned chaplain to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, which
led to his false imprisonment, where he faced the death penalty by the U.S. Government.
Yee, who is a third-generation Chinese-American graduated from West Point, comes
from a family deeply rooted in the military. He also served in the aftermath
of the first Gulf War in 1996. He later converted to Islam and became a strong
supporter of diversity, freedom of religion and tolerance.
Yee was stationed at a section called Camp X-Ray, where he was assigned to mentor
both the prisoners and the U.S. military.
“
My role was to advise the leadership of the military about the religious aspects
of the operations. My interaction with prisoners [was] speaking to them, learning
who they were as a people and advocating for their humane treatment,” Yee
said.
When Yee returned to the U.S. in 2003, he was arrested in Florida and accused
of espionage, aiding the enemy and being a terrorist spy. He spent 76 days in
a maximum security prison in Charleston, S.C. No evidence was found and all charges
were eventually dropped.
The open forum allowed students to question Yee about his personal experiences
at Guantanamo Bay. Zahra Billoo, a member of the MSA asked if he witness the
desecration of the Quoran. Yee said he did and that it led to riots, hunger strikes
and suicide attempts by the prisoners.
Kathy Masaoka of the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress brought up the question
of the legality and the rights of the prisoners.
“
They have access to the courts, but they have no rights in those courts,” Yee
said when explaining this complex occurrence of prisoners not being able to
defend themselves. He also said there were cases being applied for the U.S.
Supreme
Courts to determine where the legal representation for these prisoners who
are being held indefinitely will come from.
“
If it happened to me, it could happen to any of us,” Yee said of his
situation. He also gave an example of UC Irvine students of Iranian and Pakistani
descent
being detained coming home from a trip from Mexico. He also compared the Guantanamo
Bay prisoners to the 1956 detainment of Japanese Americans during
World War II.
“
Everything [from this situation] has taught me that things have to be changed
within the military and government,” Yee said.
He was honorably discharged from the army, but has not yet received a formal
apology from the military or the U.S. Government.
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