Force-Feedings At Guantanamo Used To Break Political Protests, Not Save Lives

Photo credit: Mos Def, undergoing forced-feeding to demonstrate it's brutality and inhumanity.

A new report from a task force convened by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations highlights the role medical professionals have played in breaking political protests among detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

There are more than 160 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who remain imprisoned. Only a few detainees have been charged with any crimes. Over 80 prisoners have been cleared for transfer by a presidential review task force established by President Barack Obama.

This year at Guantanamo one of the biggest hunger strikes in the history of the facility took place. Lawyers for detainees reported more than 100 prisoners in the prison were at one point participating in the hunger strike, which aimed to call attention to the inhumanity and hopelessness of their indefinite detention. But the hunger strike, an act of protest, was eventually broken through force-feedings that involved medical personnel.

The Task Force declares in their report titled, “Ethics Abandoned,” which was put together by doctors, “The policy of force-feeding deviates from standard, accepted medical and ethical treatment of hunger strikers and, depending on the individual circumstances, amounts to either torture or inhuman and degrading treatment.” It calls particular attention to the use of a restraint chair, which the facility began to employ in a punitive manner.

“The Task Force is aware of no precedent for using physical restraints to force-feed hunger strikers for more than a handful of episodes, much less for weeks and months (and in at least one case, years) at a time.” 

“available evidence suggests that force-feeding has been used commonly, not just in rare instances where a detainee’s life was threatened.” Therefore, the claim that force-feedings are only used to save lives is “not credible.”

“The new policy is even more punitive than those employed in the past and exacerbates the features of US hunger strike policy at Guantanamo that already violate international standards.”  

“The Task Force further concludes that by entangling physicians and nurses in a punitive approach to hunger strikes and requiring them to depart from duties of respect for patient autonomy and exercise of independent professional judgment, the DoD assigns a role to physicians and nurses that is unethical.”

“in a major policy change from the past that adds to the coerciveness of force-feeding, the detainee is no longer permitted to control drip rates or order of ingredients during enteral feeding... all elements of detainee control over flow rate, content of feeding, or location of feeding is now prohibited.”

“consistent with decisions of courts reviewing similar practices. The European Court of Human Rights, while stating that force-feeding to save a life may not amount to a violation of laws against torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, held that ‘repeated force-feeding, not prompted by valid medical reasons but rather with the aim of forcing the applicant to stop his protest, and performed in a manner which unnecessarily exposed him to great physical pain and humiliation, can only be considered as torture.’”

The World Medical Association’s guideline for medical professionals is the following:

Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the forced feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting.

The Task Force notes that “one detainee claimed that the extraction of the tubes was so painful that it sometimes resulted in blood gushing out, leading to fainting. One detainee alleged that lesions and bleeding occurred when guards held him by the chin and hair while strapped down as a medical staffer ‘forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat.’”

Abdul-Rahman Shalabi apparently claimed that one US Navy doctor had “inserted the nasogastric tube in his throat and kept moving the tube up and down until finally he started violently throwing up blood.” 

His lawyer wrote a declaration that read, “Abdul-Rahman tried to resist what he called the ‘torture’ from this physician but he could not breathe. He was suffocating and when the tube that had been jabbing him internally was finally removed, it was full of blood.”

The Task Force further outlines how, in late 2005, “five restraint chairs” were introduced into the force-feeding process, which the prison claimed were “needed to prevent detainees from disgorging food and to make force-feeding more controlled.” Twenty more chairs arrived in January.

The chair would restrain the prisoner’s arms, legs, chest and forehead. And, according to the Task Force:

…Once the detainee was immobilized in a restraint chair, medical staff would insert the nasogastric tube via the esophagus into the stomach and administer liquid nutrients over a period of around 30–50 minutes. the detainee would often remain immobilized for a further 60–90 minutes. This additional period was introduced to prevent the prisoner from using the outside end of the nasogastric tube as a “straw” to siphon off the contents of his stomach before it was digested. The force-feeding procedure was performed twice a day on each detainee…

Use of the restraint chairs was clearly intended to stifle resistance among prisoners.

One detainee, Jum’ah Aldossari, was told that if hunger strikers “challenged the United States, the United States would challenge them back using these tactics.” The fear of being brutally force-fed and the screams heard from prisoners being force-fed would induce fear, convincing prisoners to abandon their protest.

“Far from being humane, the use of force-feeding over the past decade violates the human rights of detainees and has led physicians and nurses to commit serious breaches of their professional standards. Moreover, detainees have been force-fed for weeks and months at a time. The Task Force is not aware of any precedent for ‘managing’ hunger strikes for such a long period, lasting over months, and in some cases years.”

“Neither the World Medical Association nor any standard-setting authority ever contemplated multiple force-feedings in a restraint chair over the course of weeks, much less months and years, as has been the practice at Guantánamo.”

( Kevin Gosztola )

“Closing” Guantanamo Doesn’t Mean What You Think

The interior of a cell from a disciplinary block known as Five Echo, at the detention complex at the U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay. (Credit: AP/Mc2 Kilho Park)



... let’s not get confused: closing down the prison has little to do with releasing the remaining prisoners, some of whom have been held there for nearly 12 years—almost none of them ever charged with a crime.

In fact, closing down the prison doesn’t clear up the issue of what will happen to the 164 prisoners, all of whom are foreign nationals, except that they will be “transferred,” a term that can mean whatever the President wants it to mean: relocating prisoners to another prison, releasing them to the custody of their home governments, placing them in “rehabilitation” facilities, or just simply: get them off the base.

The ACLU, surprisingly, didn’t speak to that distinction when it showcased the costs of keeping Guantánamo open over the last decade. They pointed out the millions that could be allocated to other important programs by “transferring detainees” out of Guantanamo: keeping down healthcare costs for military families, fully funding assistance in transitioning U.S. veterans to civilian life, covering the military’s body armor budget, funding prosthetics research (presumably for vets who lost limbs).

To be fair, the confusion can be partly attributed to the President’s waffling on the issue. He has offered several renditions of  “closing down” Guantánamo: Shortly after he took office in his first term, he conceded that some of the prisoners, despite lack of sufficient evidence or due to “contaminated” evidence, could never be tried. By implication, they could never be released.  Sometime after that, he toyed with the idea of relocating them to a new prison in Illinois. That plan would have allowed him, technically, to keep his promise to close Gitmo. Protests from various corners of the U.S. quickly put a kibosh on that idea.

More recently, the Obama Administration has been in talks with the Yemeni government to transfer somewhere between 55 to 80 Yemeni prisoners to Sana’a, on the condition of a new Guantanamo prison rehabilitation facility of some sort being built there. It would be funded by anyone but the U.S. — most likely the Saudis, who according to the LA Times, have had a successful track record of “rehabilitating” terrorists, presumably so that they will not fight back (against governments who’ve done them harm). The U.S. has promised that the “rehab” would include “counseling, instruction in a peaceful form of Islam, and job training in Yemen before any decision on freeing them.”  

Still, I shudder to think which other tactics will be used. See this recent clip, which shows torture being inflicted under the watchful eye of American military personnel in Afghanistan (warning: it is extremely violent). Is it unreasonable to anticipate that that the transfer of Yemeni detainees to Sana’a will be accompanied by the transfer of torture, death, and harm to their families?

Given its own track record, the Yemeni government hardly inspires confidence in the promise of ethical treatment: at times, it purports to represent the interests of the families of the Gitmo prisoners; in the same breath, it reveals itself to be a faithful servant of the U.S. by justifying or covering up U.S. drone attacks into Yemen. And now, it is engaging in negotiations with the U.S. to build a prison/halfway house to house the as-of-yet uncharged Yemenis, going so far as to offer to pay for it before rescinding its offer due to a tight government budget. It is noteworthy that the home-governments of other Gitmo prisoners have refused to imprison them again upon “transfer,” on the grounds that they have not been convicted of any crimes.

Like me, Sen. Saxby Chambliss also thinks transferring prisoners to a prison in Yemen is a bad idea, but for different reasons. Chambliss believes that the Yemenis, at least 20 of whom have been deemed “low-risk” detainees, would be a danger to the U.S. even if they were not released but transferred to a Yemeni prison. Chambliss’ logic makes sense, and could even construed be an implicit acknowledgment that the U.S. has treated these prisoners abominably. After all, if the agents of a foreign government kidnapped and tortured you, threatened to hurt your family, locked you up in a tiny cage for twelve years while guards disciplined and humiliated you, mashed up your Bible, periodically beat you for having the temerity to be unsatisfied with the arrangement, and challenged your ability to hunger strike by violently forcing a tube up your nose three times a day— all without ever charging you with a crime or showing evidence of wrongdoing — you’d be angry enough to dream of ways of getting back at that government and its officials if you were ever released.  Thomas Jefferson suspected as much back in 1781, when he suggested that after emancipation, ex-slaves should be expelled for fear of retaliation against their former owners for the inhuman treatment they had received.

But Chambliss’ fears are not substantiated. As Adam Hudson cites in a brilliant analysis of the supposedly concluded Gitmo hunger strikes, the “recidivism rate” for released Guantanamo prisoners is 4 percent. That low rate suggests that these men, if they ever were prone to violence (which we can’t determine, given the lack of evidence) are remarkably forgiving of those who have inflicted serious violence and other wrongdoing on them.

There are other reasons to oppose “transferring,” rather than releasing prisoners. Relocating human beings who’ve been caged for 11 or more years— despite any public evidence of wrongdoing–to a prison in another country is yet another feature of the quest for global hegemony by the U.S. empire.  The Post-Human Rights State, we might call it.

In this instance, U.S. imperial power, disguised as a liberal polity concerned with protecting the freedom and rights of all human beings, is revealed when it selectively showcases certain human rights that support the destructive actions planned by the state. WMD’s in Iraq.  Women’s rights in Afghanistan. Such “principles” are clearly exhorted almost exclusively to enable voters to support otherwise dubious or indefensible policies.

The issue here is one of principle as well as of realpolitik. Under the Bush Administration and its minions, heinous and unconstitutional actions were undertaken in the name of national security. Those minions, as we know, included plenty of Democrats, like Senators Feinstein, Kerry, and Clinton, who approved and supported those actions. Counter-terrorism, as we now understand it, is about exchanging sacrificing selling out human rights principles in the name of American security while chiseling away at the rights long claimed by American citizens and residents: free speech, privacy, dissent, knowing the charges that warrant my arrest, fair trials before an impartial judge, publicly shared evidence in order to convict.

The Obama Administration unabashedly continues the destruction that the Bush Administration began in 2001 in the name of national security.  Highlights include pushing for NDAA 2012; winning back on appeal (in the lawsuit filed by Chris Hedges, Alexa O’Brien and others) the right to detain people infinitely (sic) with impunity; wiretapping Americans, foreigners, the press, and heads of state alike; and persecutingwhistleblowers through dubious laws and the revocationof passports, and in collusion with foreign governments.

It is not possible to continue to violate the freedom and bodies of so many people — American or foreign, citizens or otherwise — without confronting the inevitability that those chickens will come home to roost. I don’t mean revenge. History has disproven Jefferson’s fears wrong, despite the continued persecution and mass imprisonment of Black Americans up to this day. I mean the disintegration of a society that claims to respect the bodily and psychic integrity of human beings to live and speak without fear of despotic retribution. Consequently, the United States can no longer credibly claim to be a beacon of democracy or protector of rights without hearing the loud, widespread, jeers of derision and contempt from the victims of the US’s unceasing violence: the families of droned Pakistanis and Yemenis as well as those of Gitmo detainees who have already ended their own lives; the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, as well as those of Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, John Kiriakou and many others. The list is long, too long.

In the face of this knowledge, closing Guantanamo and releasing its uncharged prisoners may be a trivial act. But it would constitute one step in the right direction — of trying to observe human rights principles while beginning to forge international relationships on a basis other than the force embodied in the long reach of destructive weapons and aggressive, unchecked, despotism. Perhaps then, we might be able to look forward to reclaiming the US’s integrity as a champion, rather than the destroyer, of human rights.

Falguni A. Sheth, a professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College

Guantánamo Bay: The Hunger Strikes

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.

The US military recently announced the end of the six-month mass hunger strike among detainees at Guantánamo Bay. But human rights groups argue that such proclamations are disingenuous as at least 16 inmates are still force-fed daily, and two are in hospital.

One detainee, 42-year-old Syrian national Abu Wa'el Dhiab, reported that the Extreme Reaction Force team, the camp's military riot squad, would "storm" Aamer's cell five times a day in an attempt to crush his resolve during the strike.

In letters recounting Aamer's treatment, which have only just been declassified, Wa'el said: "They have deprived him of food, water and medicine. Then the riot squad uses the excuse of giving him water and food and medicine to storm his cell again."

Wa'el, who like Aamer has spent 11 years inside the camp, added: "They took him to the clinic, tore his clothes off and left him with only his underwear for long hours, taunting him."

Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian detainee who has been cleared for release, corroborated the claim that solitary confinement was used as a punishment for prisoners making political statements. Belbacha, 43, described how the authorities were punishing hunger strikers by confiscating their belongings. "My glasses, legal papers, toothbrush, toothpaste and all my other necessities have been taken."

Testimonies of Belbacha, Mukbel and Aamer are among those featured in an animation narrated by actors David Morrissey and Peter Capaldi depicting life inside Guantánamo Bay. The film also uses testimony from the recently released Nabil Hadjarab, provided by their lawyers at legal charity Reprieve.

Mukbel, 35, added that other tactics were utilised to whittle down the size of the hunger strike. He said the temperature was deliberately manipulated to make conditions inside the camp even more uncomfortable and that during the hunger strike searches of cells were timed to disrupt detainees' sleep.

Cori Crider, a lawyer at Reprieve, said: "The US authorities have, with some glee, announced the hunger strike to be over. What they fail to tell you is the horrific things they did to crush the hunger strikers' spirits, as my clients have described. And yet still there are at least 16 men striking and being brutally force-fed twice a day."

Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) Force-Fed Under Standard Guantánamo Bay Procedure

Courtesy Of The Guardian

As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest.More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure

Warning: some viewers may find these images distressing

Letters From Guantanamo Bay

A Detainee Accuses US Military Guards Of Sexual Assault

Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

In the letter obtained by Al Jazeera, Chekkouri describes being sexually assaulted by guards as they search him each time he leaves and returns to his cell in order to talk to his lawyer or his wife. And he says he is not the only one enduring this kind of treatment.

In response to the allegations, the Pentagon described Guantanamo guards as "some of the most professional, most heavily scrutinized guards on the planet" adding that "absurd accusations simply do not withstand intellectual rigor".

Inside Story Americas interviewed Cori Crider, the strategic director for Reprieve, a London-based legal action charity, who is also Chekkouri's attorney. She shared information on his life before he was taken to Guantanamo. According to Crider, Cherkkouri comes from a Sufi family in Morocco, but has not lived in Morocco in many years. He was a travelling student living abroad with his family across the Middle East and South Asia, and was living with his wife and brother in Afghanistan before the US invasion.

Chekkouri was arrested trying to flee the invasion. He has been cleared and awaiting release for a long time now, his lawyer said.

Crider said there is no intention to charge Chekkouri with an offense at any point, and she has tried to take his case to a judge. Chekkouri has done everything he can to pursue the legal avenues available to him, she said, adding that "Barack Obama's task force cleared him, yet still he is there".

Another letter from a Guantanamo detainee, Abdelhadi Faraj, was published on Huffington Post. Faraj is a Syrian national who has been in US custody since 2002. He was cleared for release by a US government inter-agency taskforce in 2010, but remains imprisoned at Guantanamo.

"It is not unusual for prison guards here to search prisoners' genital parts and their rectum 10 times in a single day. Daily, I am forced into a restraint chair, my arms, legs and chest tied down tight. Big guards grab my head with both hands. I feel like my skull is being crushed. Then, so-called nurses violently push a thick tube down my nostril. Blood rushes out of my nose and mouth. The nurses turn on the feeding solution full throttle. I cannot begin to describe the pain that causes," Faraj's letter says.

It continues: "Recently, a nurse brutally yanked out the force-feeding tube, threw it on my shoulder, and left the cell, leaving me tied down to the chair. Later, the nurse returned to the cell, took the tube off my shoulder and began to reinsert it into my nose. I asked him to cleanse and purify the tube first but he refused. When I later tried to complain to another nurse about the incident, the other nurse threatened to force the feeding tube up my rear, not down my nose, if I did not suspend my hunger strike."

So are conditions for detainees deteriorating even further at Guantanamo Bay?

To discuss this, presenter Shihab Rattansi is joined by guests: Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter and a contributor to Al Jazeera English; and Ramzi Kassem, an attorney representing Guantanamo Bay detainees.

"It is equally important to step back and look at the large picture. The entire Guantanamo system is built on the disregard for the rule of law .... What we are seeing in Guantanamo today of course is a violation of medical ethics, is a violation of international law."

- Ramzi Kassem, an attorney representing Guantanamo Bay detainees

Starving For Justice

The victims in Guantanamo Bay are prisoners who are indefinitely detained, tortured & have been on hunger strike since February 6 2013. 

Human rights groups and individuals around the world continue to take part in actions, fasting and protests around the world.

- Follow groups & activists active on Twitter: @ShutGuantanamo @FreeOmarAKhadr @SaveShaker @FreeKhadr @MayRaap1 @GeorgieBC

These actions are supported by: London Guantánamo Campaign (UK), Free Omar A Khadr Campaign, Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (UK), Cageprisoners (UK), Code Pink (USA), Witness Against Torture (USA), World Can't Wait (USA), Facilitate Global (UK), Kingston Peace Council (UK), London Catholic Worker (UK), Veterans for Peace UK (UK), Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (UK), Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (UK), Voices for Creative Non-Violence (UK)

This film would not be possible to make without the help of Andy Worthington, Aisha Maniar from London Guantanamo Campaign, Aaf Post and Heather Marsh from Free Omar A Khadr (www.freeomarakhadr.com), Cageprisoners, Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez.

- Please contact The London Guantánamo Campaign for actions in the UK: london.gtmo@gmail.com

- Pledge to fast in support of the hunger strikers. Over 1000 people already have: http://codepink.salsalabs.com/o/424/p...

- Add your name to the following petitions to close Guantánamo:https://www.change.org/petitions/pres... (almost 200,000 signatures already!)

http://signon.org/sign/i-support-clos... 

http://activism.thenation.com/p/dia/a...

Buy and wear a t-shirt about Guantánamo Bay: now that the world has taken notice, keep the conversation going:https://www.allriot.com/t-shirts/guan... andhttps://www.allriot.com/t-shirts/no-g...

Out Of Sight: The Prisoners Of Guantanamo

Inside Guantánamo Bay

Photographs by Eugene Richards

I was put up in a condo of sorts, then had dinner with my minder, Sgt. Brian Godette. The next morning, he asked me what I wanted to see. My assignment from TIME was just to see what I could see, so Brian, out of sympathy, brought me out to the one place that I could visit at will: the now infamous Camp X-Ray.

This is the place, he explained, where the first detainees were brought in 2002 — close to 300 of them, he said. So I followed this young, affable soldier through the gate and up a dirt road, to aisles upon aisles of what could only be regarded as animal cages — six-foot-by-eight-foot concrete-floored cells enclosed on all sides and on top with chain link. They were all glaring light and shadows at this time of the morning, offering no protection from the sun so broiling hot, even though this was only springtime. Vines wound up through the see-through ceilings, grass cracked the concrete and the wind was blowing. Plump hutias, also known as banana rats, nested along the metal supports. Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine the place at night, when the air would be filled with mosquitoes, when the rain would blow in unobstructed. I was also shown the summer-camp-cabin looking interrogation building where, according to some reports, torture took place. Camp X-Ray, Brian went on to tell me, was closed later that year, the detainees transferred to other areas in the military prison.

The first “editing session” happened later that day, when the previous day’s images from the ferry were deleted by Brian. What I remember next was the 4 a.m. wake-up.

Along with a two-man TV crew, I was led in the near dark through four or five electronic doors onto the hallway of Camp V for pre-dawn prayers. No prisoners could be seen. No faces, no hands. All there was to see were the openings in steel doors as the guards wearing protective face shields (since detainees, we were told, spit and throw waste at them) walked up and down the block. As if in cadence, they stopped occasionally at individual cells to peer in, to whisper, to hand over medicines to inmates said to be fasting. After twenty minutes, the prayers finally seemed to drift away and the food carts were ushered in, then ushered out. Because there were few, if any, takers, we were led out of the prison.

At one point earlier in the day, the faces of detainees did appear in the elongated windows above an entryway. Dark-skinned, long-bearded men looked down at us. A TV cameraman pointed his camera in that direction, only to be cautioned that his footage would later be erased.

I returned at 5 a.m. the following morning and was ushered through the gates onto a different cell block, all too aware that some of the photographs I’d taken the previous morning had been deleted. I also wanted to hear the prayers again.

And so I went on what could only be called a media tour. The most surreal moment came during our exposure to the force-feeding apparatus. After all, that’s why the media was here — the hunger strike that had been going on since February loomed large in the debate about the camp. Surrounded by three or four media personnel and an equal number of medical personnel, we were ushered past the crash beds in the detainee hospital into a large, empty room. Dead center, beneath a single fluorescent panel, was the restraining chair. A display of the force-feeding apparatus included a bottle of the liquid nutrient Ensure and two sizes of tubing that could be put up the noses of detainees who refused to eat. As the TV camera rolled, medical personnel explained, without a hint of doubt, that the force-feeding process is not at all unpleasant (olive oil, you see, is employed as a lubricant as the tube is snaked up through the detainee’s nose and down his throat) and that, despite what others in the medical field might say, the long-term consumption of Ensure does no lasting damage.

And just like that, when I was feeling that my week was just beginning, it was over. I was upset that it was over. Before boarding the flight back to the U.S., there was one more pre-planned stop on the tour: the visit to a Gitmo gift shop, for t-shirts and figurines of Fidel Castro. But then even after the lift-off, I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling — and still can’t get rid of it now — that even though I put some time in, and that I now have some pictures that say I’ve been to Gitmo, the truth is that I have never really been there.

---

Eugene Richards is an award-winning American photographer.

The Inside Story Of The Hunger Strike And Force-Feeding At Guantanamo

By Ben Armbruster

The number of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison who the military says are participating in the current hunger strike has reached record-highs this week; and perhaps more troubling, the number of hunger strikers the military says are being force-fed — a practice experts sayviolates international law and could amount to torture — has also reached a new highs. The increasingly deteriorating situation at Guantanamo comes despite President Obama’s renewed pledge to close the Gitmo prison, and the details he presented in a recent speech on how to get that process started.

Gitmo detainees began their hunger strike on Feb. 6 to protest what they said was the guards’ mistreatment of their Qurans. On March 18, the military said 21 detainees were on hunger strike and 8 of those were receiving “enteral feeds,” also known as being force-fed or tube-fed. On Thursday, Gitmo officials say a record high of 36 hunger strikers are being force-fed and 103 detainees are refusing food in what has grown into a mass protest against their general plight and indefinite detention at the world’s most expensive prison.

The Gitmo hunger strike gained widespread attention after the New York Times published an op-ed last month by a detainee who described the harrowing process of being force-fed — which involves medical staff inserting a tube through the nose, down the esophagus and into the stomach. “I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed,” the detainee wrote in the Times. Another detainee has reportedly said it feels like a razor blade being pulled down your throat while another called the force-feeding process “agony.”

However, one issue surrounding the Gitmo hunger strike that has received little attention is just how big it is, and the military’s willingness, or lack thereof, to disclose the true nature of the protest. While it’s not only unclear how many Gitmo detainees are actually participating in the hunger strike, there’s also uncertainty about how many hunger strikers are being force-fed, and indeed, about what the military means when it says a hunger striker is being force-fed.

Detainee lawyers have said that for public relations reasons, Gitmo authorities have throughout the hunger strike sought to find ways to minimize the numbers of those refusing food. “The military kept denying that it was a hunger strike as long as it could and then it had to begin admitting — and it did this slowly — that there was a hunger strike,” Gitmo detainee lawyer David Remes told ThinkProgress. Remes and other lawyers believe the number of detainees on hunger strike is closer to 130. But, Remes adds, “Our numbers are now so close that it really doesn’t matter.”

What hasn’t been discussed in greater detail, however, is the possibility that the military is also trying to downplay the number of those hunger strikers being force-fed. Carlos Warner, another lawyer representing Guantanamo detainees, told ThinkProgress that he believes a “majority” of hunger strikers are being force-fed. “Just looking at the SOP you know that some men are coming off the [force-feed] list and some are going back on,” Warner said, referring to the Gitmo hunger strike Standard Operating Procedure Al-Jazeera recently published. “They’re all being rotated in and out … and for me that indicates likely a majority of these men, since they’re not eating, and since they’re not dying, are likely being force-fed.”

Guantanamo Bay spokesman Lt. Col. Samuel House disputed that charge. “Once the detainee is approved for enteral feeding, he stays on that list until he meets criteria to come off of the list. We have not had anyone come off the list of approved enteral feeders,” House said, adding that detainees on hunger strike are offered “a choice to eat a hot meal, drink liquid nutrient prescribed by a health care provider, or be enteral fed.”

Remes says that this choice essentially amounts to force-feeding. “For example, if I have a client that is brought into the room with a restraint chair and he is sat down at a table with a dish of honey in front of him and they tell him, ‘Drink this honey or else you’re going straight into that chair.’ Is that force feeding? Of course it is,” Remes said, adding that “to call [tube feeding] enteral feeding is to miss the point, in that it’s involuntary.”

When asked to provide names of those on the so-called “enteral feed” list (the Miami Herald has identified some of them), Lt. Col. House refused, citing Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. “This includes protecting them from curiosity,” he said. “By identifying them on a list makes them a ‘public spectacle.’”

But isn’t this precisely what the hunger strikers want, for their situation to be publicized? “I would say that every single detainee would welcome public disclosure of the fact that he is being force fed,” Remes said. “The Pentagon’s refusal to make the information public is really a result of its own fear of being made into a spectacle.”

Warner similarly dismissed House’s reasoning. “The detainees uniformly object to force feeding. Some choose to drink the formula instead of being violently fed,” he said. “Citing the Geneva Conventions in Guantanamo for the benefit of the military is the height of hypocrisy. The international community, including the United Nations, unanimously agree that the Conventions are being violated daily in Guantanamo.”

Army Capt. Jason Wright, another detainee lawyer, said that while the public curiosity provision of the Geneva Convention bars releasing the names of those prisoners being force fed, “it is unfortunately ironic that the U.S. military hides behind a generous reading [of that provision] when it releases images from Guantanamo Bay when it suits their interests.”

Wright added that “this same provision of the Geneva Convention requires the Detaining Power to protect prisoners against acts of violence and insults. The world has condemned the practice of force-feeding, and it is nothing short of violent and insulting.”

While it’s unclear whether there will ever be a real answers to the questions of how many are on hunger strike and being force-fed, lawyers for the detainees say Gitmo authorities can implement any one of a few simple policies that will ultimately end the hunger strike. “I think the hunger strike would end in two days if the commander of the joint detention group, Col. John Bogdan, agreed not to search the Qurans,” Remes said.

Wright suggested a broader approach in a recent interview with ThinkProgress. “I think a more strategic way to end the hunger strike could possibly be for the administration to take immediate steps to start releasing some of the detainees,” he said, “I think that would bring an added element of hope to their plight.”

Obama did announce in his major speech on counterrorism last week that he has lifted the ban on transferring detainees to Yemen and that he would be appointing a new special envoy on closing Guantanamo.

Remes is skeptical that the announcement will have any effect on the detainees decision to end their hunger strike. “Obama has zero credibility with the detainees,” he said. “I’m sure they know … he said he was lifting the ban — that was the big news [in the U.S.]. But they probably said, ‘Big deal, that doesn’t mean he’s going to transfer us … we’ll see it when we see it and we probably won’t see it.’”

100 Days of Guantanamo Hunger Strike

Courtesy Of Russia Today

May 16 marks a dark milestone in the history of the world's most maligned prison - 100 days of a mass hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay. Out of 166 inmates - 130 are on strike according to prisoners, while the military only admits to 102. At least a third of them are being force fed - a procedure recognized by various medical organizations as painful enough to constitute torture. And by all accounts - there's no end in sight to the protest.

RT discusses the stand-off with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who's now the Director of the Cageprisoners activist group, Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, the legal representative of 8 Guantanamo detainees, military attorney Lt. Col Barry Wingard on the line from the detention camp, and Col. Morris Davis, former Chief Prosecutor for the Terrorism Trials at Guantanamo Bay.

Gitmo Is Killing Me (Letter From Guantanamo Bay)

A Detainee Writes From Day 65 Of His Hunger Strike

The New York Times has published the following letter:

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. 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. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. 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.

A Celtic Message To Palestine

Celtic FC supporters' solidarity with left-wing causes is thought to stem from historic prejudice and exclusion faced by Catholic immigrants in Glasgow [GALLO/GETTY]


Football Fans Known For Identifying With Left-Wing Irish Causes Express Solidarity With Hunger Strikers In Israeli Jail.

By Andrew McFadyen
Last Modified: 13 Jun 2012 14:33
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Glasgow, United Kingdom - On the final day of the Scottish football season, one of the biggest crowds in Europe turned up to watch Celtic FC being crowned champions.

Nearly 60,000 fans danced and sang as their heroes demolished Edinburgh club Heart of Midlothian 5-0. Anthems such as "You’ll Never Walk Alone" and "The Celtic Song" mingled with tributes to players past and present.

Then something different happened. For a few minutes, in one corner of the stadium, a flurry of Palestinian flags flew proudly amidst the green and white colours of the home supporters.

A banner appeared reading: "Dignity is More Precious than Food."

This display of support for Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli jails was organised by members of the Green Brigade, a well-known "ultras" group who describe themselves as left-wing, anti-racist and anti-sectarian.

"We did this in solidarity, to raise awareness and because it's the right thing to do. We want Palestinians to know we are thinking about them and encourage Scottish civil society to look at the injustice in Palestine." - Celtic FC 'Green Brigade' spokesman

An unnamed spokesman told the "We are all Hana Shalabi" website: "We did this in solidarity, to raise awareness and because it's the right thing to do. We want Palestinians to know we are thinking about them and encourage Scottish civil society to look at the injustice in Palestine."

Palestinian and Basque flags have been flown at Celtic Park since at least the 1980s. Celtic's identification with left-wing causes is said to reflect the sometimes bitter experience of the Scots-Irish community from which it sprang.
 
For most of the 20th century, Irish immigrants to Scotland faced prejudice and discrimination. Catholics were excluded from skilled trades and denied jobs in many of Glasgow's shipyards and engineering workshops.

Celtic's great rivals, Rangers, the club of the Scottish Protestant establishment, reflected this intolerance with their own sectarian signing policy - refusing to enlist Catholic players - a policy which continued well into the 1980s.

Historian David Potter, who has written over 20 books about Celtic, told Al Jazeera that their success "provided a rallying point for the Irish community and gave them their self-respect".

Many Celtic fans today regard the Palestinian struggle for national freedom and equality as similar to their own.

Potter commented: "Ulster and Israel are similarly artificially created states. They were created by the British as an attempt to retain their influence, even if this was at the expense of naked and brutal suppression of those who disagreed."

On the other side of the city, Rangers fans fly the Israeli flag alongside the Union Jack.

Some Ulster Unionists make a connection between their own minority status on the island of Ireland and Israel, standing alone against its foes in a hostile region.

Other Rangers supporters fly the Star of David as a tribute to the club's former Israeli defender, Avi Cohen, who died tragically young in a motorcycle accident in 2010.

However, Alasdair McKillop from the Rangers Supporters Trust says the Israeli flags at Ibrox are largely a manifestation of the tit-for-tat dynamics of Glasgow's intense football rivalry.

He told Al Jazeera: "I don't think many Rangers fans would list 'support for Israel' if you asked them what they thought it meant to be a Rangers fan. But in the world of Rangers and Celtic, every action has an equal and opposite reaction."

The sporting significance of this cultural divide is likely to grow, as Palestine's national team attempts to qualify for major tournaments and Israel looks forward to hosting the UEFA Under-23 Championship in 2013.

Palestine was accepted as a FIFA member in 1998, after the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Nabhan Khraishi, spokesman for the Palestinian Football Association, said they are "using sport to deliver a message to the world".

A national team is a powerful symbol among a nation without a state, but progress has been difficult. In 2009, three Palestinian footballers, Ayman Alkurd, Shadi Sbakhe and Wajeh Moshtahe were among those killed during the bombing of Gaza.

"We are asking international organisations to pressure Israel to allow us freedom of movement ... We are appealing to all sports clubs to stand with us." - Nabhan Khraishi, PFA spokesman

The National Stadium and the offices of the Palestinian Football Association were also destroyed.

"We are facing harassment from the Israelis," Khraishi told Al Jazeera. "Our players - and even our technical teams - are not allowed to move freely between Gaza and the West Bank, and are held up at international borders."

When Palestine played their first competitive home international last year, an Olympic qualifier against Thailand, eight Gaza-based players were stopped from making the short journey to Ramallah for the match.

"We are asking international organisations to pressure Israel to allow us freedom of movement," said Khraishi. "We are appealing to all sports clubs to stand with us."

Amir Ofek, press attache at the Israeli embassy in London, denied that Israel was deliberately targeting players. He told Al Jazeera that "almost-daily missile attacks" launched on Israel from Gaza were the only reason for imposing travel restrictions on Palestinians.

He added that Israel had the right to control who and what entered the Palestinian territories because of the security situation - and that it had to conduct checks to stop materials being brought in that could potentially be used for "hostile activity".

Most pressing of all is the case of Palestinian footballer, Mahmoud Sarsak, whose life is said to be at grave risk after beginning a hunger strike on March 19.

Sarsak is one of 300 Palestinian prisoners being held under "administrative detention", a procedure used to hold suspects for potentially unlimited time without trial.

He has been in Israeli custody since July 2009, when he was detained at a checkpoint as he travelled from his home in Gaza to join the Palestinian national squad for a match at the Balata Refugee Camp in the northern West Bank.

The recent wave of hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners has mobilised widespread support and cut across differences of faith and geography. There are now wider calls from civic Scotland for a sporting boycott of Israel.

Pauline McNeill, a former member of the Scottish parliament and a prominent pro-Palestinian activist, told Al Jazeera that UEFA should reconsider its decision to hold its Under-23 Championship in Israel in 2013.

"Nelson Mandela said the sporting boycott was hugely significant in breaking the Apartheid Regime in South Africa," she said. "I believe it is time to make a stand that this is unacceptable. Amongst other things I believe that UEFA should not endorse the actions of Israel by playing the tournament in Israel as if it's just business as usual."

The new Scottish football season kicks-off in August. There are growing fears that Mahmoud Sarsak may never play again.