Guantánamo Bay hunger strike enters third month

The detainees, who are held without charge, are demanding their basic legal rights under the Geneva Conventions. They want adequate food and shelter, clean water, the right to challenge their incarceration before an independent commission—not the Pentagon’s kangaroo court style panels—and an end to the ongoing physical and psychological abuse and to religious persecution. They have vowed to fast until death if their demands are not met.

In line with White House policy, the Pentagon has refused to provide any detailed information on the protest, while repeating the lie that prisoners are being treated “humanely”. Last week Captain John Edmondson, head of the Guantánamo prison hospital, claimed that “no lives were at risk” and that some of those involved in hunger strike were just trying “to get attention”.

But according to Amnesty International and human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who is representing 42 of the hunger strikers, 21 have been admitted to hospital and are being force-fed through nasal catheters. The emaciated prisoners are shackled to their beds to stop them removing the tubes.

Stafford Smith told the BBC “Evening News” on September 9 that one of the reasons for the latest hunger strike was the ongoing incarceration of children in Guantánamo. He reported that an estimated 20 children were being held in the prison, including some in solitary confinement.

While the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organisations have warned that the hunger strikers face irreparable damage or death, there has been little media coverage of the desperate protest and its consequences.

The latest fast was preceded by an almost month-long protest, beginning on 21 June with a coordinated hunger strike in all five camps at Guantánamo. Almost 200 prisoners participated with some detainees refusing food for 26 days. Military authorities are reported to have force-fed over 50 men intravenously.

News of this previous hunger strike was not made public until weeks later when the Pentagon declassified testimony given by prisoners to their defence attorneys. Under US military guidelines, all notes of defence attorney-client conversations must be submitted to a Virginia military intelligence office, which then decides whether they can be released or their contents publicly discussed.

Hand-written testimony by Omar Deghayes, a 35-year-old British resident, gives some indication of the situation facing prisoners. He described incarceration in Guantánamo as a “slow death”, where “disrespect to all religious rituals” prevailed, prisoners were “degraded and abused” and there was no proper access to medicine, washing facilities or sunlight.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/guan-o20.shtml