Bermuda

Almost exactly seven years after arriving at Guantánamo in chains as accused enemy combatants, and four days after their surprise predawn flight to Bermuda, four Uighur Muslim men basked in their new-found freedom, grateful for the handshakes many residents had offered and marveling at the serene beauty of this tidy, postcard island.

In newly purchased polo shirts and chinos, the four husky men, members of a restive ethnic minority from western China, might blend in except for their scruffy beards. Smelling hibiscus flowers, luxuriating in the freedom to drift through scenic streets and harbours, they expressed wonder at their good fortune in landing here after a captivity that included more than a year in solitary confinement.

“I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever yesterday, and it was the happiest day of my life,” said Salahidin Abdulahat, 32.

They praised Bermuda for showing courage in the face of potential Chinese pressures that, in their view, powerful European countries had failed to muster. The men were among a larger group of Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) who had fled what they called Chinese persecution of Muslims in western China and spent part of 2001 in a Uighur camp in Afghanistan. They fled when the Americans bombed the camp, and were later turned in to the authorities by Pakistani villagers in return for an American bounty.

The four brought here had been cleared by American officials and courts of taking up arms against the United States or ties to global terrorism. But proposals to resettle them in the United States caused a political furor that the Obama administration did not want to aggravate.

“Before, we were asking, ‘Why are the Americans doing this to us?’” said Abdulahat. Now, he said, with others nodding in agreement, “We have ended up in such a beautiful place. We don’t want to look back, and we don’t have any hard feelings toward the US.”

Their resettlement on this British colony is a small step toward the US administration’s aim of closing down Guantánamo by January.

While some less affluent residents of Bermuda said it was unfair to offer jobs and citizenship to men the US itself would not take, many others shrugged and expressed pride at Bermudan hospitality. As the men venture from the seaside cottage where they temporarily live until they get jobs and figure out next steps, people often come up to shake their hands and wish them well.

Under the current arrangement, Bermuda will not allow the men to visit the United States. It is unclear whether they will ever be able to do so even if they gain Bermuda citizenship.

The four said they wanted nothing to do with their ostensible home country of China, which has demanded their repatriation and would almost certainly imprison them. Their homeland of Xinjiang, a Muslim region in western China, is landlocked, and many of the Uighur detainees saw an ocean—still a distant, mysterious presence—for the first time ever through fences at Guantánamo.

Palau ponders

KOROR, Palau

Sipping guava juice under cover from a tropical downpour, Tommy Remengesau Jr. says he’s always considered his Pacific island home a refuge from the troubles of the outside world. “While the rest of the planet was in conflict, we remained a piece of paradise,” the former Palauan president. “Now the world’s headaches have come home to roost in Palau.”

Last week, officials here announced that this isolated republic of more than 300 scattered islands, set amid a vast stretch of aquamarine ocean 4,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, would accept several Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay. But the “humanitarian gesture” by Palauan President Johnson Toribiong has rattled cocktail glasses and scuba tanks across this former US territory whose economy is heavily dependent on eco-tourism.

With its sparkling waters, world-class diving and small-town charm, lush Palau is about as far away as you can get from a Guantanamo prison cell. The republic is one of the world’s smallest nations, with only 20,000 people.

If the US no longer considers the Uighurs a threat, why doesn’t it take them, they ask? Why dump them on some far-flung island republic with a tight-knit, everyone-knows-his-neighbour culture?

As she scrubbed floor mats at a community car wash, Chandis Cooper said even if Toribiong is her uncle, she thinks he’s flat-out wrong to bring the Uighurs to Palau. “Those men could get lost in the US if they wanted—the nation is that big. But here on Palau, there’s nowhere for them to go,” she said. “Our police department has a hard enough time chasing down kids out past curfew—what are they going to do with a bunch of Guantanamo inmates?

Under a pact that Palau signed with the US before its independence, Washington agreed to give Palau $20 million annually. In recent months, both sides have worked on a new aid package that could exceed $200 million. US State Department officials insist the aid is not tied to Palau’s agreement to accept Guantanamo detainees.

Toribiong said no amount of aid or diplomatic arm-twisting could have influenced his decision to accept the inmates. “This wasn’t an obligation; it was an honour,” Toribiong said as he drank a bottle of Perrier a few feet from the crashing surf. “We’re showing that we’re a partner to the U.S. in good times and in bad.

Toribiong said he initially agreed to accept 17 Uighurs but later learned that the US had unexpectedly sent four to Bermuda. He now expects 13 detainees to arrive soon. Once here, they will be put in a halfway house until homes and jobs are found for them—the funds for their relocation will be covered by the US, Toribiong said. He insisted that the arrangement is temporary and will be periodically reviewed.

The people of Palau are already reviewing the arrangement. At a gas station in downtown Koror, a dozen residents sat around plastic tables hashing out the island’s problems. “My question is where are we going to put these people? Are we going to let them roam around?” asked Evans Beches, a former island politician. “And where was the referendum on this?”