As the Guantanamo hunger strike enters its 100th day, the number of voices, both in the US and around the world, to close the facility are growing stronger and louder.
Lawyers acting for prisoners in Guantanamo say the real figures may be higher, but officially of the 166 inmates in Guantanamo, 102 are currently on hunger strike. Of these, 30 are being force-fed through a nasal tube and three are in hospital.
Follow RT’s
day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike.
The 166 prisoners have been there eleven and a half years and 90
per cent of them haven’t been charged with a crime.
The hunger strike began in February after an altercation between
prisoners and guards, after guards allegedly interfered with the
inmates personal belongings including the mishandling of
Koran’s.
Original only a few dozen of the prisoners were refusing to eat but
by the end of April the authorities in charge of Guantanamo were
forced to admit that the number had jumped to 102.
On April 14th, Cindy Panuco, a lawyer for the Afghan detainee
Obaidullah told RT that guards were moving prisoners from
communal living into single cells under the pretext of stopping
them from acquiring weapons, but almost certainly in an attempt to
break their resolve and stop them hunger striking.
Feroz Abbasi, who was released from Guantanamo without charges,
described how he was psychologically tortured by the Guantanamo
guards.
“For some reason on the same night Iraq was bombed in March
2003, I was moved into isolation, solitary confinement, and I was
there for two years. Six months of which were without
sunlight,” he said.
Clive Stafford Smith a British human rights lawyer who is representing Sahker Aamer, the last British inmate in Guantanamo, told RT that the conditions his client experiences are worse than “death row ”.
“When a prisoner doesn’t do exactly what they are told, six guys dressed up as if they are in Darth Vader outfits come in and basically beat him up. If [Aamer] wants a bottle of water, they send them, if he wants his medicines, they send them. Now he just doesn’t ask for his medication.” Hunger strikers who have been force-fed describe it as the final humiliation. There are three stages to the pain, firstly there is the sensation of a tube being forced past their sinuses into their throat, which causes their eyes to water, then an intense burning and gagging sensation as it goes down the throat and finally when the tube enters the stomach there is a strong urge to vomit. When the tube has delivered the ‘food’, it triggers the most painful sensation of all: the return of hunger.
Disturbing accounts by lawyers for Guantanamo inmates emerged Monday, that prisoners who wish to talk to their legal representatives are being subjected to humiliating new body searches.
David Remes, a lawyer for a Guantanamo inmate, told AFP that under the new search policy, “a detainee who leaves his camp is subject to a search including his private parts and holding his private parts.” Remes said that the searches were deliberately intended to deter detainees from meeting with their lawyers.
President Obama declared earlier this month that the
“Pentagon is trying to manage the situation [in Guantanamo] as
best in can”.
But on March 29th, well over a month since the hunger strike began, RT reported that a Pentagon briefing by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made no reference to the strike.
Also in March the Department for Defense requested almost $200 million to renovate the prison camp, while at the beginning of 2013 the state department wound up the office that was in charge of closing down the prison.
As the strike enters its 100th day, it now commands interest from the mainstream western media, but as the British MP George Galloway told RT in March, initially only RT and a handful of other outlets such as the British newspaper the Guardian, gave it significant coverage.
Human Right’s plea
A consortium of 20 human right’s organizations, pressure groups and
law bodies including Human Rights Watch and the American Civil
Liberties Union, issued a plea Monday to the US defense secretary
Chuck Hagel to end the practice of force-feeding in Guantanamo.
The letter noted that the practice of force-feeding at Guantanamo
amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and is in
violation of the Geneva conventions to which the US is a
signatory.
There is also a growing level of discomfort about what is happening
in Guantanamo among the medical community. An editorial published
in the medical journal the Lancet earlier this month said that in
this case force-feeding prisoners who had chosen not to eat as a
form of protest “infringes the principle of patient
autonomy.”
The hacktivist group Anonymous has also
announced it will mark the 100th day of the hunger strike by
calling for 3 days of protests.
“We stand in solidarity with the Guantanamo hunger strikers. We
will shut down Guantanamo,” an online statement from Anonymous
reads.
The group didn’t specify how it would achieve its goal but promised
“Twitter storms, email bombs and fax bombs.”
Petition
While the Pentagon drags its heels on Guantanamo, a number of high
profile figures from the US establishment have come forward to
actively campaign for its closure.
A petition, which was started by Morris Davis, the former Chief Prosecutor for
terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, was filed earlier this month
and includes a letter to President Obama to bring about the closure
of the prison.
Hosted by the Change.org website it has already received 204,642
signatures well over the goal of 200,000. It calls on the president
to “Direct Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel to use his authority
to issue the certifications or national security waivers required
by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2013) to affect
transfers from Guantanamo.”
Davis served for 25 years in the US air force and was a Guantanamo
prosecutor for two years, personally charging Bin Laden’s driver
Salim Hamdan. Davis notes in the introduction to why he
started the petition, “There is something fundamentally wrong with
a system where not being charged with a war crime keeps you locked
away indefinitely and a war crime conviction is your ticket
home.”
“The Supreme Court here in the US, every decision they’ve come out with involving Guantanamo has been adverse to the government. So there is no good reason to keep it open other than political talking points for the far right,” Davis told RT earlier this month.
He also said that it is “extraordinarily expensive” to operate.
“It is over a $100 million a year just to operate the facility, not counting the $200 million that General Kelly said he needs to rehabilitate these warn-out facilities,” he said.
Cleared to leave
86 of the 166 prisoners still in Guantanamo have been cleared to
leave the facility but haven’t been allowed to leave because there
is no arrangement as to where they can be sent.
On the 25th April, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to the Obama
administration requesting it re-examine the release of low-level
Guantanamo detainees to Yemen.
Following an attempt by the Yemini branch of Al-Qaeda to blow up a
Detroit-bound jet liner, the transfer of 56 Yemeni bound inmates
was halted.
But Feinstein, argues that in light of the unprecedented desperation among detainees, and in light of Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s strong resistance to Al-Qaeda, transfers to Yemen should resume.
'Problems in Guantanamo'
President Obama has repeatedly said he wants to close the detention
center, but insists that he must persuade Congress that it is in
America’s interests to shut it down.
He promised to “re-engage with Congress to try to make the case
that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the
American people.”
He went on to insist that justice has been served in a way that is
“consistent with the rule of law” and the American
constitution.
But he conceded that it was no surprise that there were
“problems in Guantanamo” and that it isn’t necessary in
keeping America safe.
“It is expensive, it is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our
international standing. It lessons cooperation with our allies on
counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists.
It needs to be closed,” he said.