56th Day Of The Gitmo Hunger Strike
Oct 09, 2005
JUS News Desk; Excerpts From Cage Prsioners

Prisoners at Guantánamo are now 56 days into their current hunger strike and it is all getting very serious. The reasons the so-called “illegal combatants” have for preferring death to a life at this notorious camp are obvious; the constant debasement and deception of the prisoners by their custodians, and the lack of hope that the prisoners will ever receive a fair trial. The second major hunger strike since early July, when various prisoners came close to death, the US military agreed to make “necessary changes”. Almost immediately, the military reneged. But then that’s the American way isn’t it?

The Urgency Of The Problem

The situation in Guantánamo Bay is dire. The hunger strike going on is not almost two months old and people are likely to die. Much in the minds of the prisoners can be learned from Binyam Mohammed in his recently-unclassified statement:

“I am Binyam Mohammed. I am 27 years old. I was seized by the Americans on April 10, 2002, and I have been held by them since. They took me forcibly to Morocco where I endured 18 months of torture from July 21, 2002, to January 21, 2004. I was then taken by the Americans to Afghanistan and, on September 19, 2004, to Guantánamo Bay.

All this time the conditions of my confinement have been a nightmare. Along with other U.S. prisoners, I have been routinely humiliated and abused and constantly lied to. We were very, very patient here in Guantánamo. But finally enough was enough, and in late June we organized a strike across the prison. People refused food and water, some for over 20 days, and became so weak they were hospitalized. They refused an I.V. drip and the doctor told them that he could not force them to take sustenance even if they were in a coma. He had the people in the hospital confirm twice, before witnesses, that they refused resuscitation if it came to that.

The administration eventually agreed, if we stopped the hunger strike, to negotiate on good faith. I had not eaten for just four days but I had been very weak and fallen down. The administration promised that if we gave them ten days, they would bring the prison into compliance with the Geneva Conventions. They said this had been approved by Donald Rumsfeld himself in Washington, D.C. As a result of these promises, we agreed to end the strike on July 28th, 2005.

It is now August 11th, 2005. They have betrayed our trust (again). Hisham from Tunisia was savagely beaten in his interrogation, and they public[ly] desecrated the Qur’an (again). Saad from Kuwait was ERF’d (Emergency Reaction Force) for refusing to go (again) to interrogation because the female interrogator had sexually humiliated him (again) for 5 1/2 hours. Omar the kid from Canada was ERF’d (again) for refusing to go to another illegal interrogation.

Therefore the strike must begin again. Some have already begun – 150 have begun in Camps I, II & III. 60 people in Camp V begin today. I will begin tomorrow – Friday, August 12th, 2005. I do not plan to stop until I either die or we are respected. People will definitely die. We ask only for justice: treat us, as promised, under the rules of the Geneva Conventions for Civilian Prisoners while we are held, and either try us fairly for a valid criminal charge or set us free.”

As you read this document, the Guantánamo Titanic is headed for the iceberg. The ship is being steered to its doom by the U.S. Navy, which is categorically unwilling to behave reasonably. The Navy is in charge, and nobody is allowed to comment as the ship steams full speed ahead. On the other side are 502 prisoners, who have grown desperate after more than three years of constant deceit. The military has lied to the prisoners over, and over, and over again. When lawyers were ordered into the base, the military sent interrogators to pose as lawyers. The military even lied to the prisoners about the proper time to pray.

Guantánamo presents a unique problem in the Western world, because of the military’s insistence on secrecy even where such secrecy is patently unnecessary. How can the security of the nation be threatened by information about the physical well-being of our prisoners? Yet, as the prisoners starve to death hundreds of miles to the south of this Court, no public monitoring of their status is permitted.

Earlier Hunger Strike Gives Us Clues

In late June and most of July 2005, a hunger strike took place in Camp V. A similar action took place in Camps I, II, III and IV. The July hunger strike was a rolling one. They began on June 21, 2005, by rejecting one meal each day for a week. On June 28, they began to reject two meals. On July 2, 2005, they began rejecting all food. A majority of Camp V are taking part in the hunger strike. Some are not able to because they have medical conditions. During the last hunger strike it was said that “detainees are being monitored by medical professionals and their vital signs are being checked daily.” This much is true, but it is deceptive. Monitoring will not save the lives of the prisoners. The critical issue is whether the prisoners are going to be allowed to die from lack of food and water.

On August 11th, 2005, the hunger strike started again with150 prisoners who had joined it in Camps I, II & III, with additional prisoners set to join it from Camp IV and V. This means that many prisoners are now in danger of starving to death and the matter is very urgent.

Prisoners Face Many Problem

The prisoners have shown a surprising degree of patience in the face of abuse. However, gradually, the prisoners have come to the end of their tether. And time is running out. The biggest complaint is simple. More than 500 people have been held without any meaningful charges or trial for upwards of three years. The prisoners demand meaningful access to court – that they should be charged or released.
One of the main demands is to close Camp V. The terrible conditions of Camp V remain a major focus of this strike, because they are simply inhumane. The prisoners there are held in solitary isolation, and noise-making fans have been introduced to try to ensure that there should be no meaningful communication among the prisoners:

“The cells in Camp V are concrete isolation cells. It is very difficult to hear or see anyone. The guards try to prevent meaningful communication. We would try to shout at each other, so they placed guards in the corridors. If he hears anyone trying to talk, he would come and bang loudly on the doors to stop this. But we were too many, and we talked all at the same time to frustrate their plans. They tried using noisy fans to drown out any conversation.”

Contrary to the occasional military statements to the contrary, the prisoners get very limited time outside their solitary isolation cells:

“For one year, I have walked on the rec yard only once a week, and that is when I am lucky, as sometimes we do not go out at all and two weeks pass without leaving the cells. Sometimes the excuse is that someone else is on the yard. This could be the Red Cross, or anyone on the yard – then nobody can go out. Sometimes the Red Cross is here for many days, which makes our conditions even worse rather than the promise that they will be better. The ‘yard’ itself is only twice as big as the cell. We are never under the sun, as the ‘yard’ is covered. Sometimes we are walked at night. Sometimes there are two people out in separate rec yards at the same time, and it is possible to talk. But there are some prisoners who are only ever taken out when there is nobody else there, so that they will never have another person to talk to. We are told that this is done on the instructions of the interrogators.”

Some of the prisoners suffer badly from this, both physically and mentally. For example, M.C., the juvenile prisoner, has suffered skin diseases because of his lack of exposure to sunlight. Despite his complaints to the medical officers, this persisted for many months. Reflecting the limited recreation, the prisoners in Camp V are also denied reasonable sanitary facilities including showers: “We only go to the shower when we go to rec, so that means that if you don’t get outside, you don’t get to clean yourself.”

Despite the military’s public assurances that any use of light as a coercive interrogation tool was limited to Afghanistan and the early days of Guantánamo, this technique is still in use in Camp V: “The lights are some of the worst tools used against us. They are neon, two and a half metres long, glaring 24 hours a day. They are fitted directly above the concrete tomb that is meant to be our bed. They are never dimmed. Have you ever lived in bright lights for 24hours a day, every day? It is a constant struggle to get any sleep at all. Many in the camp suffer mentally from sleep deprivation.”

Likewise, although the military insists that any physical mistreatment of prisoners is a thing of the past, the experience of Camp V prisoners shows this to be false.

“The Physical abuse is very bad. On May 25, at 06.35, one of the MP’s slammed the beenhole [what we call the grate] on M.C.’s hand. M.C as you know is one of the juveniles. The MP was the one who abused the Qur’an. He is Hispanic, heavyset, tall and middle-aged. He later did the same thing to two other prisoners, Awaisha and Ahmad, apparently causing them broken bones.

They continue to use the ERF [Emergency Reaction Team] for abusing prisoners in Camp V. indeed, the verb ‘to be ERF’d’ has long since entered our language. A prisoner called Farid was beaten by the ERF team and left naked for three weeks. Farid is already lame because the guards in Kandahar broke his knee. Saud Jihani, Issa Murbati and Hisham Sliti have also been particular victims of the ERF team. All three were beaten and left naked. When Sliti returned from a lawyer visit in Camp Echo in May, four of the ERF team ‘mules’ came into his cell, beat him, held him to the floor, and then rifled through his Qur’an solely to offend him.”

“At the end on 2004, O was in my block, and he refused to give back his paper plate as a minor protest over something. Five members of the ERF team came in on him and three kneed him in the stomach until they had knocked him to the floor. This ruptured his stomach and he suffered constant and increasing pain. He asked for medical care for several months. Finally, on May 7 2005, he saw a doctor, who said his situation was very dangerous. He has to undergo an operation as a result of this. He was kept at the hospital for only two days, and then returned to Camp V. We have heard his screams of pain whenever he uses the toilet. One day he collapsed in his cell, and so we felt forced to conduct joint protest on his behalf. Part of his problem is that he does not speak English, so that when he needs help, and when the MP’s finally respond to his cries, they say that there is no translator. It is cruel. Finally, we were able to pressure the military into taking him back to the clinic. As they took him to the clinic, he was crying out in pain, and the guards – sad to say – were laughing at him. When he came back, he was put in the cell across from me, so I would hear each time he called for help from the MP’s. The MP’s often refuse to respond to him, walking directly by his cell. Last week [June 2005], he collapsed in his cell again and they took him back to the clinic. As of this writing, he has not returned. Beating him so badly was, in the first place, a vicious act for so minor a rule violation – a rule violation committed by someone who is being held without being proven guilty of any crime. He has received permanent injury from this.”

These abuses leave the prisoners with permanent damage. Omar Deghayes, the British refugee from Libya, has been blinded by the U.S. military: “I have previously described to you the abuse I suffered from the ERF team when they gouged my eyes and left me permanently blind in my right eye. While I can see nothing out of it, my eye is very sensitive to light. It is particularly painful because they leave the bright neon lights on all the time.”

Juveniles Still Held

Extraordinarily, the military has also held juveniles in Camp V, under conditions that are unacceptable for anyone, let alone someone who was a child when seized. The unclassified evidence reveals that at least three juveniles – MC, OK and HBA – have been held routinely in Camp V.

This mistreatment is particularly harmful for the juveniles, as illustrated by the following description:

“With MC (a juvenile) he has suffered continuous skin rashes from the absence of sunlight. The doctors said it was caused because he was not exposed to fresh air and sunlight, and because his clothes and blankets were changed so rarely. After the doctor’s diagnosis, MC was still only allowed one hour outside in two weeks – despite the promise of the regulations that we would get three hours a week. When he was taken outside, he therefore refused to come in until the issue was addressed. The guards called the ERF team hooligans, and they beat him (and another prisoner) up and forced them back into their cells. Both were left naked but for boxer shorts for three weeks. They had their bedclothes confiscated, and had to sleep on bare concrete. Nothing has been done to redress the problem of his skin condition.

“Indeed, they came to MC and told him that he has to submit an injection. He refused because he did not know what it was. They entered his cell again, and one guard called [NAME OMITTED] knocked him down to the ground. The others held him down to the ground. The others held him down and they forcibly injected him, while his blood was flowing on the floor. The rest of us were banging on the doors and loudly objecting, as it is shameful that they treat a kid this way. The injection was a sedative of some sort, and MC was comatose for three full days after the injection. We were very concerned about him, as we could not wake him, and he did not even wake for prayer. He did not know anything, and afterwards he could not remember anything about what had happened to him.

“For more than a year now, MC has constantly been coming in for this mistreatment. It began just before he came to Camp V, when he was in Camp Delta. MC had just moved cell when, at roughly 3a.m, the ERF team burst into his cell, pulled him off his bed, and beat him. They broke two of his teeth, and he was bleeding. They shackled him and took him onto the rec yard where they hosed him down before throwing him back on the floor of his cell. MC had no idea what this was about, although he thought this beating had been ordered by his interrogator, [NAME OMITTED], who had been angry because MC would not say what he wanted to hear. But the next day a translator came in and told him it had been a mistake, and the ERF team had not realized that he had moved cell. The previous occupant had committed some offence, apparently spitting on the General or a senior officer, and was meant to be punished for this.”

MC is not the only juvenile to have suffered. Indeed, one of the precipitants to the August hunger strike has been the violent physical abuse of the juvenile OK by the ERF team, after the military’s purported agreement not to mistreat the prisoners in the way that has unfortunately been commonplace.

Religious Intolerance, Desecration Of The Qur’an

“Abuse of our religion and the Qur’an still continues. In all the time I have been here, I have never been visited by a Muslim ‘chaplain’ or Imam. I have been asking for such help for over a year now. When I returned to Camp V from my counsel meeting in May, the Qur’an that I had to leave in my cell had been searched in my absence. As everyone knows, this is very offensive to Muslims as a non-Muslim did this. We had hoped that we had made this point by prior non-violent protests, but the abuse of the Qur’an continues in far worse ways than this as well. When the prisoners read the newspaper reports where the military denied abusing the Qur’an it was very sad – the acts taken against the Qur’an have been so offensive that they do not bear to mention here.”

Unfortunately, this abuse continues to this day. While the military has promised that the Qur’an would not be subject to desecration again, this has not been the case. Indeed, in the abuse of Hisham Sliti that was the precipitating misconduct leading to the new hunger strike, again the Qur’an has reportedly been desecrated twice more.

General Prison Conditions

The third tier of complaints involves general conditions at the prison, with the prisoners demanding that they be held consistent with the Geneva Conventions, as promised by the authorities. These issues concern medical mistreatment of the prisoners, the general conditions of confinement that must be addressed.

Sad to say, in addition to providing wholly inadequate medical care to the prisoners, the military has made the right to necessary medical care contingent on the prisoners’ cooperation with interrogation, a policy that shocks the conscience:

“The plight of the people who have had limbs amputated is among the saddest of the conditions of this ugly camp. I have twice been housed next to prisoners with prosthetic limbs. It was one of the most depressing experiences I have endured. The prisoners were effectively blackmailed by their interrogators who said that they had to cooperate in order to get their prosthetic devices back. They are denied the toilet chairs, the sticks they need to walk and even the cream they need to ensure that the wound will not become infected and inflamed. The pain is apparently particularly great when they are denied the necessary prosthetic socks, so that the wounds are exposed to the extreme cold of the cells.”

There are various issues of basic sanitation that continue to plague the prisoners. For example, scorpions are present in the camps, and even make it into the prisoners’ food: “Scorpions just walk around in Camp V. In June 2004, Juma was bitten by one in the cell in front of me. The incident should be registered with the medical staff, who treated him for it. As related below, Hisham Sliti found one in his food.”

The toilets often do not function properly, overflowing and resulting in other unsanitary conditions: “There are frequent overflows, and occasional blockages of the toilets. Apart from other disgusting consequences, this seems to dramatically increase the number of mosquitoes. When I see you next, I will show you my hands and feet so that you can see the bites everywhere. This suffering is continuous.”

The prisoners asked that they be permitted to have drinkable water available. The water is a yellow-brown color and has a very bad odor.

End Abusive Treatment

There have been various hold-overs from the more overt policies of coercion used to break the prisoners down in Guantánamo. One issue was sleep deprivation. The prisoners requested that no movement or interrogation of prisoners would take place between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., as this caused a great disturbance on the blocks and made it impossible for the prisoners to sleep. They also asked that there be no cleaning of the blocks at night with the extremely pungent pine oil cleaner that was sloshed around causing breathing problems for asthmatics and others.

A second such hold-over is the continued use of excessive cold and noise to break down the prisoners:

“The strong A/C is fitted to blow directly on the concrete bed. If you lie down the stream blows directly in your face, unless you turn around in which case you have to put your face directly into the stainless steel toilet. You have your Hobsen’s choice, between illness and odour. The A/C is particularly strong in Wing D, where it is used as a particular abuse. Thankfully, I have not had to deal with this lately, as it is generally reserved for the new arrivals from Bagram. But if you anger the interrogators, you can end up there. Three people were sent there recently. Indeed, recently there has been a new tool for our torture. They put very large noisy fans in every corridor, even though there is nobody in the corridors, so they do nobody any good. They make very disturbing noises and they are left on all day and night, even the time for prayer. They are there just to make a noise to make communications between prisoners even more difficult. * * * Yet the fans are only minor in the pantheon of abuses that we suffer in Camp V. But if the central command is unhappy at us in Camp V they raise the level of the fans to make life more intolerable. If an interrogator is angry at a particular prisoner, he moves the fan in front of the prisoner’s door. Only when an important visitor comes do they turn the fans off. Does anyone really believe that the U.S. could spend all the millions they have spent on Camp V and not get fans that do not do this? I was in a Pakistani prison and they had fans that were silent there. Does Pakistan have better technology than the U.S?”

The prisoners requested that the sexual humiliation of prisoners in Camp Romeo cease at once. This, as discussed above, has been an on-going sore in the conditions of the prison.

Diet Unacceptable

Various comments have been made publicly by the Bush Administration and its congressional allies about the supposedly high quality of the food in Guantánamo Bay, including statements to the effect that prisoners enjoy such delights as lemon chicken and rice pilaf. This is apparently the fruit of false information provided to important visitors in an effort to use them to relay misinformation back to the public:

“Mr. Deghayes noted that there are a series of prisoners who are working with the military who are used to meet with important visitors to make the Camp look good. One such person was in Camp Romeo with Mr. Deghayes and he eventually confessed that he was working with the military. He had been picked because he spoke various languages. * * * There are at least seven people who have either confessed to this, or been exposed as having done it.

In truth, it is a much different story.

“The food is terrible. In June 2005, one evening at about 6pm, Hisham Sliti found a dead scorpion cooked in his dinner. He had already eaten some of it, and he began to get a bad pain in his stomach, and then vomited. He showed the scorpion to the MP, and the sergeant. The last time we had Lemon Chicken in Guantánamo Bay was never. I have never even seen a lemon in this place.”

The main meal at breakfast, served second day for the past two years, consists of two pancakes (often cold), with a piece of fruit. This is alternated with two other breakfasts, served on the second and fourth day in each rotation. On the second day, the meal is eggs with oatmeal – the oatmeal is the dish that most often comes with undesirable items in it such as worms. On the fourth day, it is cornflakes with a vegetarian burger. This is a very strange mix, and the vegetarian burger is very unappetizing.

“The lunch includes boiled tinned vegetables that are tasteless, almost inedible, and most people do not eat them.” For example, as counsel observed, on July 3rd, 2005, the lunch included boiled tinned okra, very dry undercooked rice, and a piece of fish that was rancid. On July 3rd, 2005, the lunch included boiled tinned potatoes, mushy carrots (that had a bitter taste and were totally inedible) with kidney beans. The food was all boiled without spices – and was all tasteless except for the bad tinned flavor. There was a slice of stale brown bread, and a tasteless apple. On July 5th, 2005, the lunch included a veggie burger (like the one served at breakfast), tinned brussel sprouts boiled like the English do (soggy and tasteless), very dry undercooked rice, and brown pita bread with a strange aftertaste. For the Military to suggest that this food is of a high quality is risible.

The prisoners have sometimes been given food that is incompatible with their religious beliefs:

“The food is always very limited. One month ago [May 2005] they suddenly started serving food that was clearly unsuitable for Muslims. This went on for a week.

Fortunately, only those who could read English knew this, so the others did not starve. But they were very sad when they learned later when word was able to spread that they had been duped into eating such food.”

The hunger strike at US Guantanamo Bay prison camp is now nearly two months old and has entered a serious stage, the International Committee of the Red Cross says. It is time for the Muslim Ummah to act.

For more information, please contact www.cageprisoners.com