Rene — WAR ON TRUTH AT GUANTANAMO
Topic(s): Guantanamo Bay | Comments Off on Rene — WAR ON TRUTH AT GUANTANAMOhttp://www.ww4report.com/node/1338
WAR ON TRUTH AT GUANTANAMO
Detainees Launch Non-Violent Resistance Behind Pentagon’s Iron Veil
by Tanya Theriault
The veil of secrecy at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when
tugged at, continues to reveal the inhumane treatment of detainees held
there. Since January 2002, the US has been imprisoning men (at present 505)
from some 30 to 40 countries – primarily Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and
Yemen – indefinitely, without legal process, as “enemy combatants,” so as to
dodge the requirements of the Geneva Conventions on torture. Reports of
torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo continue to come from a variety
of sources. Amnesty International has called the detention of the inmates
“unlawful and arbitrary,” and found conditions at the prison to be “cruel,
inhumane and degrading.” The International Committee of the Red Cross took
the rare, bold step of making public the abuse and mental deterioration of
inmates as a result of their indefinite and often solitary imprisonment,
calling interminable detention of prisoners “tantamount to torture.” What is
hidden about the detention camp at Guantanamo should terrify us, as what we
know now to be true makes us tremble in shame.
In a mounting effort to address their abusive treatment and detention
without charge or trial, many of the prisoners have engaged in hunger
strikes. The Department of Defense (DOD) has maintained sole control of who
can enter the camps and under what conditions – including restricting legal
access – and what those who do enter can hear or say about it. For this
reason, the existence of such protests by prisoners has been little known.
With the recent release of internal DOD memos and FBI interviews with
detainees (obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under freedom of
information legislation), as well as statements from former detainees and
accounts from prisoners’ counsel, it is now evident that detainees have been
protesting their detention by hunger strikes and in other ways since 2002.
Using these resources, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a
report in September, “The Guantanamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes and Protests,”
detailing the history of prisoners’ acts of protest. CCR is a New
York-based, non-profit legal organization representing 40 of the prisoners.
Over a year and a half has passed since the US Supreme Court, in Rasul vs.
Bush (argued by CCR), decided that detainees can challenge their detention
and the conditions of their imprisonment in federal court. It is evident by
the increasing intensity of the hunger strikes, that prisoners’ frustrations
and despair has grown as the government has stalled any legal progress.
According to the report, one or more hunger strikes occurred in early 2002
over the desecration of the Qu’ran by a military police officer (MP). For
Catholics, the analogous act is mistreatment of the Eucharist. British
citizen and released detainee, Rhuhel Ahmed recalled one incident, “I saw a
guard walked into a detainee’s cell, searched through the Koran and dropped
it on the floor. The detainee told him to pick it up and put it in its
holder. I remember the guard looked at the Koran on the floor and said
‘this’ and then kicked it. Everyone started shouting and banging the doors.
The guard ran out of the cell and the entire camp was on lockdown for half a
day. On that day there was a hunger strike [that lasted] for three days.”
The report states, “A former interrogator at Guantanamo also confirmed the
released detainees’ accounts of such hunger strike and the military’s public
apology over the handling of the Qu’ran.”
Later that year, up to 194 detainees were participating in rolling hunger
strikes over a two-month period to protest what military officials
acknowledged as “their murky future.” Three detainees were given IV fluids
forcibly. Beginning a pattern, the military downplayed the significance and
gravity of the hunger strikes. In a prepared statement for the Guantanamo
Joint Task Force, Marine Maj. Steve Cox asserted that “by no means is this
an organized, concerted effort by the camp’s detainee population but merely
a demonstration of some of the detainees’ displeasure over the uncertainty
of their future.”
A June/July 2005 hunger strike was made public on July 20th by two former
Afghan prisoners. According to attorneys from the DC-based law firm Sherman
and Sterling, which represents forty prisoners, in addition “to starvation
until death,” the protesters planned to boycott showers, recreation time,
and called for “no violence, by hand or even words, to anyone, including the
guards.” The military acknowledges 52 men were involved in the strike, but
lawyers put the number closer to 200. While US Senators were getting summer
show tours of the camp, CCR reports that close to 50 men were on IV
hydration and that, overwhelmed, medics ceased regular medical visits.
The strike ended on July 28 after the prisoners were promised better access
to books, bottled drinking water and a prisoner grievance committee. The
committee was soon after dissolved. In a statement given to his lawyer,
Binyam Mohammed, a British prisoner, said: “The administration promised that
if we gave them ten days, they would bring the prison into compliance with
the Geneva Conventions… It is now August 11. They have betrayed our trust
(again). Hisham from Tunisia was savagely beaten in his interrogation and
they publicly desecrated the Qu’ran (again). Saad from Kuwait was ERF’d
(visited by the Extreme Reaction Force) for refusing to go to interrogation
because the female interrogator had sexually humiliated him… Therefore,
the strike must go on.”
By mid-September of this year, lawyers for the prisoners reported that as
many as 210 prisoners, nearly half, were involved in a hunger strike that
began in early August. At that point, The Washington Post (Sept. 13)
reported that eighteen were hospitalized; thirteen were being force-fed by
nasal tubes and five by IV hydration. The strike had spread throughout all
five camps within the detention center. Initially, the Army responded with
the claim that only 76 prisoners were on a hunger strike, then increased
that number to 130 the following week. A Reuters report issued on Sept. 21
relayed that the US military’s count of hunger strikers dropped to 36 from
130 the following week; prisoners’ lawyers found that hard to believe.
The World Medical Association (WMA), of which the American Medical
Association is a member, declared in 1991 that hunger strikers, mentally
competent as determined by the attending physician, and informed of all
medical consequences regarding long-term withdrawal from food and hydration,
cannot be force-fed. The physician is morally obligated to interview the
hunger striker daily and to inform the striker’s family. According to The
Guardian of Sept. 9, a military spokesperson stated: “They are being held in
the same standards as US prison standards… [T]hey don’t allow people to
kill themselves via starvation.” A military spokesperson claimed that
prisoners are monitored 24 hours a day. If that is true, the military has
been aware of these life-threatening strikes and has failed to inform the
families of detainees or their lawyers.
Hunger strikers are refusing to sign refusal-of-food/water waiver forms.
There have been reports of prisoners pulling out their IVs and nasal
tubes – and consequently restrained beyond leg shackles and handcuffs. In a
statement given to his lawyer (quoted in The Guardian), Binyam Mohammed
said, “I do not plan to stop until I either die or we are respected. People
will definitely die. Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop
the illegitimate internment of Irishmen without trial. He had the courage of
his convictions and he starved himself to death. Nobody should believe for
one moment that my brothers here have less courage.” The NY Times reported
Sept. 17: “A senior military official…speaking on the condition of
anonymity, described the situation as greatly troublesome for the camp’s
authorities and said they had tried several ways to end the hunger strike,
without success.”
The detention camp at Guantanamo is the jewel of the US military’s semantic
effort to distort the truth. There had been 350 reported suicide attempts in
the first year and a half of its operation. That number slowed remarkably
when the US began distinguishing between what is a “suicide attempt” and
what they call “manipulative, self-injurious behavior.” The military’s
definition of a hunger striker is one who has refused to take at least nine
consecutive meals in 72 hours, which is one reason why the lawyers’ count of
hunger strikers and the military’s differ so dramatically. The term
“force-feeding” has been replaced by “assisted feeding.” By narrowing
definitions, potential problems no longer exist.
Clive Stafford-Smith, a British human rights lawyer, offered a statement
from his client, a British refugee and Guantanamo prisoner, in an Oct. 1
article in The Nation. “I am dying a slow death in this solitary prison
cell,” said his client Omar Deghayes, “I have no rights, no hope. So why not
take my destiny into my own hands, and die for a principle?”
In the face of this torture and the prisoners’ desperation, the silence of
US citizens, especially that of the US clergy and other moral leaders, is
shocking. As people of faith, we are called to witness to the truth, and the
truth is that the people held in Guantanamo Bay are being tortured by our
military, and our government is trying to hide it. Do we have the strength
and courage to make this end?
——
This story originally appeared in the December 2005 issue The Catholic
Worker, newspaper of the New York City branch of the Catholic Worker
movement, 36 East 1st St., New York, NY 10003
RESOURCES:
CCR Guantanamo Action Center
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/gac
CCR report, “The Guantanamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes and Protests,” Setember
2005
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:9eoNDN08S3MJ:www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/septem
ber_11th/docs/Gitmo_Hunger_Strike_Report_Sept_2005.pdf+%22prisoner+hunger+strike
s+and+protests%22&hl=en
>From our weblog:
Hunger strikers pledge to die in Gitmo
http://ww4report.com/node/1069
Pentagon admits Koran desecration
http://ww4report.com/node/524
Minors held, beaten at Gitmo?
http://ww4report.com/node/618
Gonzales may face war crimes charges in Germany
http://ww4report.com/node/167
See also our coverage of Rasul v. Bush (scroll down to second-to-last blurb)
http://ww4report.com/iraq5.html
———————–
Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution