Despite military claims that the number of hunger strikers in Guantanamo has decreased, the signals from inside the detention camp indicate that the inmates haven’t lost the will to fight against their indefinite detention, lawyer Carlos Warner, told RT.
The prison authorities said that 37 detainees remained on hunger
strike, with 33 of them being force fed as the action entered its
200th day on Saturday.
The protest hasn’t so far led to improvement in detention
conditions or persuaded president Obama to fulfil his 2008
campaign promise to shut Gitmo down, US public defender, Warner
said.
“Although we know the numbers – according to the military – are
dropping, the words I hear from the camp are just as bad as
they’ve always been – suffering, tube feeding, people not getting
along, no communication with the military,” he said.
“Although the military is telling us that the numbers have
gone down. That’s not the story that we’re hearing. We’re hearing
that again, that this horrible suffering is going on and this is
the 200th day of it.”
“Even looking at the military’s numbers, to think that even 37
or 40 men haven’t eaten for 200 days it’s just pretty incredible
to think about it,” the public defender, who works with
several Guantanamo inmates, added.
Warner believes that the data, which is coming from the prison
authorities doesn’t correspond with reality as the military
aren’t interested in accurate media coverage of the strike.
“We don’t know what the military uses as their metric to say
that somebody isn’t hunger striking,” the attorney stressed.
“They make different claims, but again they never attach names
to the people, who are or aren’t hunger striking. We don’t know
if it’s the same 37. We don’t know if it’s a different 37. We
don’t know that because maybe somebody ate a meal – now they’re
not counted. The bottom line is we believe the hunger strike is
grand in duration and in size.”
“The thing with the military is, remember, when in February
when this started we said a 130 men were on hunger strike, they
said – six. It took them a few months to, I think, get to 102 and
when we knew it was 130 or more hunger striking. The numbers that
you get from the military, you just can’t rely on them. All we
can rely on is what we hear from the camp. And what we hear is
that the same suffering is going on. There’s no negotiation going
on. The men aren’t getting along with the military. And certainly
we’re not getting any movement, any real spirit coming from the
White House,” he added.
According to Warner, the practice of sexual abuse at Gitmo was
implemented by the authorities to prevent the detainees from
communicating with the outside world and sharing information on
the strike.
“The sexual abuse goes around these searches, these groin
searches that they began. And they did these searches, obviously,
to keep my clients from talking to me,” he said. “During
this time of our budget crisis, the only way I could communicate
with my clients was over the phone. And the military began
searching the groin areas of my clients, we believe, for no other
reason than to keep them from talking to me, so I can’t talk to
you about it.”
“This started a few months ago. In terms of investigation, I
don’t think anybody is investigating that. The camp says that
we’re doing this for security purposes, but that’s preposterous
when you consider that the client isn’t even seeing a lawyer –
the client is with soldiers talking on the phone the entire
time,” the attorney added.
But the public defender acknowledged that the media focus has
recently switched from Gitmo to other topics, which hampers the
efforts of those demanding Guantanamo’s closure.
“When the strike began I was giving three, four interviews a week
on this," he said. "People were paying attention. But after
200 days the press cycle changes. People stop paying attention.
And it’s clear that the President is a political animal. He pays
attention to the problems that are getting attention. And this
isn’t necessarily getting the attention that it was a few months
ago. But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to quit. We’re going
to keep fighting. We’re going to keep pushing in Washington to
have the President do what he should do."
Warner has urged Barack Obama to show political will and keep his
promise to close the facility or, at least, his more recent
pledge of setting free 86 inmates, who have been cleared for
release for years now.
“Remember, the President has the authority to transfer these
individuals now,” the lawyer said. “He can do it under the
current law. But no exceptions. And he’s choosing not to do so.
And he’s even said that there were several countries that were
ready, willing, and able to take those individuals. We know
there’s 86 of them that are cleared for release. The President
has done nothing on that yet – In spite of his words.”
The attorney stressed that the state of things at Guantanamo was
against the Geneva Convention and that must be changed.
“Guantanamo is an animal in of itself. If you pick somebody up
on the battlefield, certainly you can hold him as a prisoner of
war,” Waren explained. “I mean we’re going to have
something interesting happen next year when hostilities allegedly
are going to end in Afghanistan. And we’ll see how the president
deals with that. People at Department of Defense have said that,
you know, we would have no legal authority to hold these
individuals after that. But they don’t have the authority to hold
them now, yet they’re not transferring them. So Guantanamo is a
political animal. It’s run by xenophobia here in the US. And it’s
just going to take a lot of hard work from not only people like
me, but from people in Washington in order to close it. But right
now you don’t see that.”
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.