Monday, September 19, 2005

Gitmo Hunger Strike Continues

More than one hundred detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly are on a hunger strike, with 20 of them hospitalized on feeding tubes. So reports Big Sky News.

Others put the number of participants considerably higher.

USA Today reports that London attorney Clive Stafford Smith, who represents about 40 detainees, says 210 prisoners were on hunger strikes Aug. 15, when he last visited the camp. Stafford Smith says the detainees want to be charged or released. Smith says Omar Deghayes a Libyan who has lived in London, told him: "Look, I'm dying a slow death in this place as it is. I don't have any hope of fair treatment, so what have I got to lose?" Smith says prisoners also are protesting the quality of food and water, alleged beatings and the military's alleged mishandling of the Quran. "The military wants to downplay this," he says. "The truth is, these guys are going to die."

Last week the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) condemned the Department of Defense’s (DOD) refusal to provide the families of Guantánamo hunger strikers with information about the prisoners’ health status. To date, the DOD has only confirmed publicly that military doctors are keeping 18 hospitalized prisoners alive through extraordinary force-feeding measures, some via nasoenteric (nasal) tube feeding. The DOD has not disclosed the names of the prisoners to their families, or explained to families whether their relative is likely to suffer long-term physical or psychological injury from the hunger strike.

The CCR says that According to policy guidelines issued by the World Medical Association (WMA), of which the American Medical Association is a member, physicians treating hunger strike participants in prison facilities have a responsibility to inform a prisoner’s family that he is participating in the hunger strike unless the patient specifically prohibits the doctor from doing so.

CCR attorneys say the military doctors treating the Guantánamo hunger strikers should immediately communicate directly with families or through the International Committee of the Red Cross or home country consulate offices.

“In any other hospital context, families would be, and indeed must be, intimately involved in these medical decisions. There is no reason to deny the families of Guantánamo prisoners this right,” stated CCR Attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez. “Hundreds of families who have learned of the severity of the hunger strike are waiting anxiously for any news of their loved one. No national security interest is served by withholding a prisoners’ health status from his parents, wife, or children and making these families suffer. Military physicians should afford every patient and his family basic human dignity and respect.”

Major Jeffrey Weir, a spokesman at the base, said that the prisoners who were being fed at the hospital were generally not strapped to their beds and gurneys but were in handcuffs and leg restraints. A 21st prisoner at the hospital is voluntarily accepting liquid food. Weir said, according to the International Herald Tribune, the prisoners usually accept the nasal tubes passively because they know they will be restrained and fed forcibly if necessary. "We will not let them starve themselves to the point of causing harm to themselves," he said, describing the process as "assisted feeding" rather than force-feeding. On at least one occasion, he said, a prisoner was restrained and forcibly fed.

Weir refused to acknowledge that the detainees were protesting poor conditions or beatings and said that it is his understanding that the detainees are merely trying to call attention to their "continued detention."Sources: Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Jurist, Big News Network, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, Daily Times (Pakistan)

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In related news, The Kuwait Times says today the United States has agreed to release five of the 11 Kuwaitis imprisoned at its camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Talks between the US and Kuwaiti governments have almost been completed to release five of the prisoners," said Khalid Al-Ouda, the head of the society of families of Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantanamo. "Two of the six, Abdulaziz Al-Shimmari and Fawzi Al-Ouda, have been hospitalised after their health deteriorated for refusing to take food for five weeks," said Ouda, citing US lawyers who visited them. "The lawyers told me the two were skin and bones and Shimmari could not walk ... The remaining four are not in good health." Source: Kuwait Times

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