Latest Mint Press News update on Guantanamo Bay, May 1:
The United Nations (UN) has declared that force-feeding prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison is a form of torture, escalating the international condemnation as 100 prisoners continue a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention without trial and poor living conditions.
“If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment – and it’s the case, it’s painful – then it is prohibited by international law,” Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, said this week.
Those who have been force-fed describe the process as extremely painful and even violent. “I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up,” wrote Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Guantanamo detainee from Yemen in a recent New York Times Op-Ed. “I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before.”
Moqbel is one of 100 detainees currently on hunger strike. In response to the prisoner uprising, the U.S. military dispatched a more medical staff to cope with the those who are frail and near death. No detainees have died, but 21 detainees are being force-fed through nasal tubes to prevent starvation.
President Obama reiterated on Tuesday his commitment to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention complex during a press conference at the White House. The President had originally promised to close the detention facility while campaigning in 2008, a promise to which he claims to remain committed. “I continue to believe that we’ve got to close Guantanamo,” Obama said at the White House. “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us, in terms of our international standing.”
Previous Mint Press News coverage follows:
April 29:
For the first time since hunger strikes began at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in February, the U.S. government is officially acknowledging that at least 100 of the 166 detainees are refusing food, protesting poor prison conditions and prolonged imprisonment without charge or trial.
According to a recent email from Lieutenant Col. Samuel House, a spokesman for the detention operation at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, 20 of the detainees are being force fed to prevent starvation, a practice many human rights organizations and advocacy groups believe is a form of torture.
No detainees have died but a Muslim cultural adviser at Guantanamo Bay told reporters last week that one or more of the detainees would likely die before the hunger strike ended.
In response to the waves of recent hunger strikes, the U.S. government has dispatched a new medical team to Guantanamo to deal with the crisis. The new team, numbering less than 40, reportedly will include a doctor, nurses, corpsmen and medics, who will supplement the 100 medical personnel already on duty.
April 22:
Nearly half of the 166 Guantanamo detainees are now on hunger strike, with 17 being force fed to avoid starvation and death. A U.S. military spokesman announced that in the past few days, 25 detainees have joined the protest, increasing the total number abstaining from food to 77.
“They say they want their freedom, or they’ll try trying to get it,” said Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington. The first wave of the detainee hunger strikes began in early February when prison officials confiscated Qurans and other religious materials. Lawyers representing the detainees claim that prison guards disposed of the materials in an offensive manner.
The bigger issue driving protests remains the prolonged detention of suspects without charge or due process of law. Shaker Aamer, one of the detainees on hunger strike, has spent more than 11 years at Guantánamo without a trial. He remains behind bars despite being cleared for release six years ago.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International, report that since the prison opened in 2002, detainees have been subject to a wide range of interrogation tactics that constitute “ill-treatment,” including “stress positions, sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, the use of 20-hour interrogations, hooding during transportation and interrogation, stripping and forcible shaving.”
March 25:
Activists with the human rights group, Witness Against Torture (WAT), began a hunger strike last week in solidarity with dozens of detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison who have gone without food for weeks to protest inhumane conditions at the detention facility. Eight of the Guantanamo hunger strikers are in grave physical condition, having lost enough weight that doctors are now force-feeding them liquid nutrients.
“We will gather for action in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities domestically and internationally next week to denounce the barbaric practice of torture and indefinite detention and to demand justice for the men at Guantanamo,” WAT announced on its website.
The solidarity fast by WAT began on Sunday and is scheduled to last through March 30. A handful of activists plan to continue fasting every Friday until the prison is closed.
The group has also called upon supporters to flood the prison with letters in support of detainees and to tell prison authorities “that the world has not forgotten the hunger strikers.”
Earlier this month, lawyers for Guantanamo detainees reported that more than 100 men were on hunger strike to protest the confiscation of personal items and religious texts. Later reports by Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), indicate that as of March 19, 24 out of the 166 still held at the facility are on hunger strike.
Since opening in 2002, roughly 774 detainees have been held at Guantanamo Bay prison without charge, trial or due process of law. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have claimed that the detentions are illegal and that prison authorities have used waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other methods of torture against the detainees.
March 20 report by Katie Rucke:
The exact number of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison on hunger strike may be up for debate, but the fact that there is a hunger strike protesting inhumane conditions at the prison is not.
Mint Press News reported that lawyers representing detainees reported that more than 100 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison were on a mass hunger strike after prison guards began confiscating personal items including prisoners’ religious text, the Quran.
Nearly all of the some 166 prisoners being held in the prison have been detained for about 11 years without any charge, a major violation of their civil liberties. This has also fueled some of the anger that has led to the most recent hunger strike.
About 51 detainee attorneys recently wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel week expressing their concern, due to the fact that “at least two dozen men have lost consciousness due to low blood glucose levels.”
“Since approximately February 6, 2013, camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote in a letter to the U.S. Military earlier this month.
In response to the allegations, two Defense Department spokesmen, Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale at the Pentagon and Capt. Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), have acknowledged there is a hunger strike, but deny the event is occurring on as large of a scale as originally exposed by the attorneys.
“That there is any concrete, mass hunger strike — that is an utter fabrication,” Breasseale said. “Some who claim to be hunger striking are in fact eating handfuls of trail mix, nuts and other food. They are taking in plenty of calories.”
In a letter to the international news organization Russia Today (RT), Durand wrote that the JTF-GTMO “takes its duty to treat detainees humanely very seriously and seeks to ensure we conduct ourselves in accordance with the highest standards, and we remain under continual scrutiny, oversight and inspection.”
Durand also called the allegations about the mass hunger strike and the confiscation of personal items, including the Quran, “outright falsehoods and gross exaggerations.”
According to the Pentagon, a detainee is on a hunger strike when they refuse nine consecutive meals, are not seen snacking and have lost a certain amount of body weight.
Based on this definition, Durand says 24 detainees were on a hunger strike as of March 19, and eight of those strikers had lost enough weight that doctors were force-feeding them liquid nutrients through tubes inserted into their noses and down into their stomachs.
Lack of a universal definition of what constitutes a hunger strike, added to the lack of information about what occurs at Guantanamo Bay prison, has left human rights organizations dissatisfied.
“If the definition of a hunger striker is entirely in their control and is a matter of their discretion, then I think that explains how they are able to say that there are no more than a handful of men on hunger strike,” said Pardiss Kebriaei of the CCR.
Still, Durand insists that the hunger strike is not as large-scale as once thought. “If it was 166 [detainees], I would tell you it was 166. I don’t have a reason to low ball or pad the numbers.”