Refugees In a Troubled Private Detention Center Are On Hunger Strike

Update (06/12/17, 10:15PM): On Monday morning, guards at the Adelanto Detention Facility allegedly attacked nine detainees, all members of a refugee caravan which arrived at the US-Mexico border in May. On Monday morning, according to two of the caravan organizers, Tristan Call and Alex Mensing, the group delivered a letter of grievances to prison officials and demanded a meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). At that point, say Call and Mensing, who spoke with the refugees after the incident, guards allegedly beat the men, “drenched” them in pepper spray, handcuffed them, and placed them in restrictive housing. It was then, ICE claims, that members of the caravan announced their hunger strike.

Kentucky Inmate Starved To Death

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A prison doctor has been fired and two other staffers are in the midst of being dismissed after an inmate at the Kentucky State Penitentiary starved himself to death, a case that has exposed lapses in medical treatment and in how hunger strikes are handled at the facility. Prison officials have asked prosecutors to investigate after The Associated Press began asking questions about the inmate's death.

Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Files Historic Lawsuit Against Obama Over Force-Feeding

Emad Abdullah Hassan, a Yemeni inmate at Guantanamo Bay, introduced a historic lawsuit on Tuesday against the U.S. military prison's force-feeding of detainees on hunger strikes.

The case marks the first legal challenge requiring a federal judge to oversee an inmate's testimony on Guantanamo prison conditions.

Hassan, who has reportedly engaged in a continuous hunger strike since 2007, was turned over to the U.S. by Pakistani security forces for suspected affiliation with armed groups, but was cleared for release in 2009.

Hunger strikers protest indefinite detentions in Lindsay, Ontario

"We are taking a stand. We want Immigration to know what’s going on. We want the public to contact Immigration Canada. We need the Canadian public to put pressure on the Immigration minister so they can stop this lengthy and cruel and unusual detentions." -- Martin Sisay, from inside Lindsay’s maximum-security prison

"I missed three of my sons birthdays, I missed three anniversaries with my wife…I can not see myself here being detained indefinitely and thinking about them. That will drive me crazy. So I have to keep it out of sight and out of mind. How inhumane is that. I am a father and I am a husband. Should I even be allowed to feel like this." -- Amin Mjasiri, from inside Lindsay’s maximum-security prison

Starving for Justice

This past April, the Youth Against Settlements website posted a letter from Samer Tariq Issawi, a Palestinian imprisoned by the Israeli government. “I invite you to visit me, to see a skeleton tied to his hospital bed, and around him three exhausted jailers,” he wrote. “Sometimes they have their appetizing food and drinks around me. The jailers watch my suffering, my loss of weight and my gradual melting.”

Initially locked up in 2002 for violent crimes, Issawi was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. In July 2012, Israeli forces imprisoned him again after he violated the terms of his parole by traveling to the West Bank. A military committee refused to let him see the evidence against him as it sought to impose the remainder of his original twenty-six-year sentence. Facing an unfair trial and seventeen more years in prison, he started a hunger strike in August 2012. He was still fasting on April 22 when the committee held a bedside hearing. Issawi had become a hero to many Palestinians, a symbol of resistance. News of his debilitation had triggered clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters in Bethlehem. Clearly fearing what would happen if he died, the committee agreed to release him in eight months. If Israel keeps its word, Issawi will leave prison in December.

Letters detail punitive tactics used on Guantánamo hunger strikers

The US military secretly used a variety of tactics to break the resolve of the Guantánamo Bay hunger strikers, including placing them in solitary confinement if they continued to refuse food, newly declassified interviews with detainees reveal.

One prisoner also said that the last British resident held inside the camp, Shaker Aamer, had been targeted and humiliated by the authorities to the point where it became impossible for the 44-year-old to continue his protest.

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: Why I have gone on hunger strike

Beginning Monday, 23 September, I am going on hunger strike. This is an extreme method, but I am convinced that it is my only way out of my current situation.

The penal colony administration refuses to hear me. But I, in turn, refuse to back down from my demands. I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions. I demand that the colony administration respect human rights; I demand that the Mordovia camp function in accordance with the law. I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves.

With One Prisoner Dead, Will California Listen to the Hunger Strikers?

On July 22, 32-year-old Billy “Guero” Sell was found dead in his cell at Corcoran State Prison, in California, the first apparent casualty of a widespread hunger strike organized by state prisoners. Sell’s fellow prisoners reported to outside advocates that he had been asking for medical attention since July 15 or 16. He died four days later.

Officials at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) originally disputed Sell’s involvement in the hunger strike, investigating his death as an apparent suicide. Corcoran staff found Sell unresponsive in his cell during their half-hour welfare checks of SHU prisoners. Sell was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Tens of Thousands of California Prisoners Launch Mass Hunger Strike

On Monday, July 8, prisoners at the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison began a mass hunger strike to protest long-term solitary confinement. It is not the first time such an action has taken place. In 2011, prisoners staged two separate hunger strikes to protest their continued placement in long-term solitary confinement.

Hunger strikers issued five core demands:

1. Eliminate group punishments for individual rules violations.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.

4. Provide adequate food.

5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.

‘Only way to end Gitmo strike fairly is to set cleared inmates free’

As the Guantanamo hunger strike enters day 100, the inmates’ lawyers have revealed details of abuses their clients are subject to, while the prison authorities keep denying they are resorting to practices violating human rights.

A fair trial would have been a natural step. To have all of the parties heard and resolve the crisis, believes Clive Stafford Smith, founder of legal group Reprieve, and an attorney for several detainees in the Guantánamo Bay camp.

ACLU, Human Rights Groups: 'Cruel' Force-Feeding Of Hunger-Striking Guantanamo Detainees Must End

The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups on Monday called on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to halt the force-feeding of hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees.

In a letter addressed to Hagel, the organizations describe the process being used to deliver nutrients to 29 of the 100 prisoners who are currently protesting by not eating:

    The force-feeding process is inherently cruel, inhuman, and degrading. The prisoner is strapped into a chair with restraints on his legs, arms, body, and sometimes head, immobilizing him. A tube is inserted up his nostril, and snaked down his throat into his stomach. A liquid nutritional supplement is then forced down the tube. The prisoner is restrained in the chair for upwards of two hours to prevent him from vomiting. As Guantánamo hunger-striker Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel explained recently: “I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before.” 1 Debilitating risks of force-feeding include major infections, pneumonia, collapsed lungs, heart failure, post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological trauma.

Guantanamo Hunger Strike Lays Bare Detainees' Growing Desperation

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- For weeks, said Army Col. John V. Bogdan, the man in charge of Guantanamo’s detention facilities, he had tried to bring the crisis to a peaceful resolution. Since early February, a little more than six months after he took over command here, detainees had been protesting their treatment. Those in the communal Camp Six had covered video cameras with empty cereal boxes and other items, preventing U.S. officials from monitoring their movements.

Guantánamo 'not in the best interests of the American people', says Obama

Barack Obama vowed to take action to close the controversial prison camp at Guantánamo Bay on Tuesday, declaring that he did not want any of its hunger-striking inmates to die of starvation.

At a press conference in Washington, Obama said it was not sustainable to keep Guantánamo open, warning its continued existence was a "recruitment tool" for extremists. The president promised to take the issue back to Congress, which blocked his earlier attempts to fulfill a 2008 campaign promise to close the camp.

A Hundred Hungry Men at Guantánamo

Is Guantánamo falling? The Navy sent reinforcements to the prison there on Monday—forty medics, added to the cohort guarding a hundred and sixty-six prisoners, watching them in their cells, and, increasingly, pulling them into rooms where they are strapped to chairs and have rubber tubes stuck into their noses and snaked down to their stomachs, then pumping in a can’s worth of a liquid nutritional supplement. That is what our sailors are assigned to do now. Two weeks ago, according to press reports, guards in riot gear were sent into what had been a cell block for compliant prisoners—a raid on our own jail—to transfer more than sixty of them into single-cell lockdown. It took five hours. The guards ended up firing what the military called “less-than-lethal rounds”—rubber bullets and pellets—while the prisoners threw “improvised weapons” at them. But mostly the prisoners have been starving themselves.

Can Obama Stop the Uprising at Gitmo?

The revolt at Gitmo is growing.

A hunger strike at the detention center has now swelled to what may be the largest act of civil disobedience in the camp's history, with at least 100 of the camp's 166 detainees refusing to eat. Beginning in February after detainees claimed guards were searching their holy books, the protest has since broadened into what observers have called an "act of despair" over being held indefinitely without trial. "The fact that so many detainees have now been held at Guantanamo for over a decade and their belief that there is still no end in sight for them is a reason there is a growing problem of more and more detainees on a hunger strike," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, wrote in a letter to National Security Director Tom Donilon last Thursday.

A Desperate Situation at Guantánamo: Over 130 Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Dozens Being Force-Fed

The U.S. military has acknowledged for the first time the number of prisoners on hunger strike at the military prison has topped 100. About a fifth of the hunger strikers are now being force-fed. Lawyers for the prisoners say more than 130 men are taking part in the hunger strike, which began in February. One of the hunger strikers is a Yemeni man named Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel. In a letter published in The New York Times, he wrote: "Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made. I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late." We speak to attorney Carlos Warner, who represents 11 prisoners at Guantánamo. He spoke to one of them on Friday. "Unfortunately, they’re held because the president has no political will to end Guantánamo," Warner says. "The president has the authority to transfer individuals if he believes that it’s in the interests of the United States. But he doesn’t have the political will to do so because 166 men in Guantánamo don’t have much pull in the United States. But the average American on the street does not understand that half of these men, 86 of the men, are cleared for release."

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Source: Democracy Now!
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Gitmo Hunger Strike Rises To 97 Prisoners

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who are on a hunger strike has risen again.

Lt. Col. Samuel House said Friday that 97 men are now on strike, up three from the day before. He says 19 of them are receiving liquid nutrients through a nasal tube to prevent dangerous weight loss. Another five are under observation at the hospital on the U.S. base in Cuba.

He says none have life-threatening conditions.

The hunger strike began in February, with prisoners protesting conditions and their indefinite confinement. Lawyers for the prisoners say the military is undercounting the number of hunger strikers.

The U.S. holds 166 prisoners at Guantanamo, most without charges.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: AP

Guantanamo Hunger Strike Holds, Half Of Detainees Involved: Military

Over half of Guantanamo's 166 detainees are officially recognized as hunger strikers, a military spokesman on the remote Navy base said Tuesday.

Lt. Col. Sam House said that 84 Guantanamo detainees were on a hunger strike, the same number as were recognized on Monday. Seventeen of the detainees were being force-fed and four of that group were in the hospital. The numbers have grown since a raid on Guantanamo's Camp Six earlier this month.

The military's Muslim advisor told a small group of reporters in Guantanamo last week that more than one detainee would die before the hunger strike ended.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: Ryan J. Reilly

Gitmo hunger strike on rise, 15 prisoners force-fed

Days after violent clashes between guards and prisoners, the US military says a hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay is on the rise as the number of those fasting has increased from 45 to 52. Some 15 prisoners are being force-fed.

Gitmo spokesman Navy Capt. Robert Durand said the number of prisoners classified as hunger strikers has increased in just one day.

At the same time, lawyers for Guantanamo inmates say the strike is more widespread than the military acknowledges and the majority of all 166 prisoners are fasting.

Meanwhile, senior military officials at the Guantanamo Bay detention center defended a raid on Saturday that resulted in a violent clash with detainees. Two US soldiers received head wounds and five prisoners suffered assorted injuries.

Lawyers for the inmates claim they are barred from speaking with their clients.

The atmosphere is tense as a weeks-long hunger strike by detainees protesting their indefinite detention continues.

Soldiers equipped with riot gear swept into a recreation area and were met with resistance from several dozen prisoners, the commander of the detention center told journalists visiting Guantanamo Bay detention facility (Gitmo).

"The appropriate amount of force was used for the situation," Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith, commander of the detention center, told the small group of reporters.

Guards carried out a raid on Camp 6 because the prisoners had repeatedly blocked 147 of the 160 security cameras, making it impossible to monitor the detainees during the hunger strike, the AP article said.

Smith said the guards were concerned a prisoner might try to commit suicide. Officials said there were two attempted suicides since the first broke out around February 6.

Shortly before the raid, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had conducted a visit to Gitmo, after which it confirmed that force-feeding is occurring at the facility, a practice that the ICRC and groups like Physicians for Human Rights condemn.

The Pentagon has countered the argument, saying it wouldn't be humane to let an inmate die from starvation. Detainees who are force-fed are strapped down to a gurney while a tube is forced up their nose and into the esophagus.

A New York Times op-ed written by a Guantanamo prisoner on Monday described the process as extremely painful.

"There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach," Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel wrote.

"I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone." News of the prison clash surfaced as the US military is conducting closed door tribunals, which have been marred from the start by controversy.

Lawyers for the detainees have criticized the use of listening devices planted in the cells designed to eavesdrop on private conversations between the prisoners and their military legal counsel. The court itself has complained of testimony from the defendants being cut off in mid-sentence by unknown sources.

The list of obstructions to achieving some semblance of justice, never an easy thing in a military tribunal to begin with, threatens to turn the tribunals into a kangaroo court.

"Defense emails have ended up being provided to the prosecution, material has disappeared off the defense server, and sometimes reappeared, in different formats, or with different names," Rick Kammen, a lawyer for Abd Al Rahim Al Nashiri, who is accused of plotting the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, said, as quoted by the public interest website, ProPublica.

The legal defenders said they were unsure whether the emails were intentionally grabbed or collected erroneously due to “technical or procedural errors.” Meanwhile, a Guantanamo Bay lawyer who represents 11 detainees was denied an emergency call to communicate with one of his clients on Tuesday, an email obtained by Rolling Stone reveals.

Defense attorney Carlos Warner requested an emergency call with his client, Fayiz Muhammad Ahmed al Kandari, on Monday morning and received notice that his request had been denied Tuesday afternoon. The Pentagon's refusal to grant Warner's call comes just days after US forces raided the communal prison unit at Gitmo.

"The military is closing ranks and restricting access to clients," Warner said in an email to reporters.

"They don't want the public to know what happened during its raid." Warner was told he could re-apply and give the normal 15 days notice – a procedure he said he understood was "routinely not followed," though this was his first request to place an emergency call.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the allegations.

Following the clash, military authorities decided to terminate communal housing, which permitted detainees to eat and associate together, and place the prisoners into solitary cells.

Although journalists are forbidden to speak with the prisoners, one of the detainees had managed to display a crudely scrawled message in broken English that read:

"Stop torturing us. Stop desecrating our religion." Commander Smith said the prisoners may later be permitted to return to the communal detention areas if they complied with prison rules.

Meanwhile, the hunger strike continues, with 45 prisoners refusing meals and 13 being force fed, officials said.

Original Article
Source: rt.com
Author: --

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.