Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strike: 'The Situation Is An Emergency'

On the heels of a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay's New York Times op-ed, "Gitmo Is Killing Me," HuffPost Live hosted a discussion Tuesday about conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison, where detainees have taken to hunger strikes to call attention to the fact that they've been detained for years without being charged for any crimes.

"The situation is an emergency," Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told HuffPost Live host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.

Kebriaei visited Guantanamo last week and reported that the situation at the prison is critical:

    "There are people in critical condition. The men that I sat across from and met have lost over 30 and 40 pounds. They were incredibly weak. They told me of other people in the prison who are skeletal, skin and bones, who can barely move. What the military had been doing as a response had been to move people from the communal camps...to a solitary confinement facility when they were falling ill and losing consciousness. And at that point starting force feeding, which is basically how the authorities are saving life at Guantanamo right now. There's a critical situation going on right now."

"I would say it's probably a lot worse than what's in the op-ed," Brandon Neely, an army veteran who served as a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay, added. "I would say whatever the government puts out is only going to be a fraction of what it really is. The fact is: they're never gonna tell you the truth, they don't want it to get out."

Neely added that hunger striking is the prisoners 'form of protest" and predicted that more detainees will die "before this situation gets any better."

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: Danny Shea

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