Official Number of Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strikers Jumps To 100
IN FOCUS, ANGLO AMERICA, MILITARISM, JUSTICE, HEALTH, 29 Apr 2013
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service
The official number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay reached 100 on Saturday [27 Apr 2013] – three more than the day before. Twenty of the detainees are receiving enteral feeds, five of whom are being observed in a detainee hospital.
Lawyers for the detainees contest the official numbers, saying that some 130 prisoners are actually taking part in the protest. The hunger strike began around February 6, when detainees claimed prison officials searched their copies of the Koran for contraband, according to their attorneys.
Prisoners are also protesting their extrajudicial incarceration at the prison. Most of Guantanamo Bay’s 166 detainees have been cleared for release or were never charged, a situation that has prompted criticism from human rights organizations.
“The illegal detentions without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay have gone on for more than a decade with no end in sight, so it’s not surprising that detainees feel desperate,” counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch, Laura Pitter, said in a statement.
As the number of detainees being fed by tubes continues to grow, so does the criticism surrounding the practice of force-feeding. The Constitution Project, a non-profit group that promotes bipartisan consensus on legal reform, concluded in a recent report that
“forced feeding of detainees is a form of abuse and must end.” However, Guantanamo authorities have offered a different assessment:
“I refuse to say ‘force-feeding.’ It refers to a cartoon where individuals are strapped, yelling, screaming, mouth open and food is dumped down the person’s throat and that is not the case,” Guantanamo spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House said, as quoted by AFP.
“We will continue to prevent people from starving. It is by all means the rights of detainees to protest, however it is our mission to provide a safe, secure and human environment and we will not allow our detainees to starve themselves to death,” House added.
Meanwhile, Pitter has urged the Obama administration to do more to end the
“unlawful practice that will forever be a black mark on US history.”
White House spokesperson Jay Carney argued that Congress is to blame for the failure to close Guantanamo, not the Obama administration.
“The president remains committed to closing the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay,” Carney said in a statement.
“A fundamental obstacle to closing this detention facility…remains in Congress.” President Obama pledged to close Guantanamo as he assumed office in 2009. However, he was unable to act on his promise after Congress imposed restrictions on Gitmo detainee transfers.
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RT is currently on a waiting list for a media visit to Guantanamo Bay.
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HEALTH:
His Excellency Kim Jong-un,
I have the “honor” to refer to serious human rights abuses in your country.
The “Country Reports on Human Rights Practice 2012”, prepared by the United States, discusses serious human rights violations, including those in China and those in your country. In response to the Country Reports, China prepared a human rights report on the United States. (http://www.transcend.org/tms/2013/04/human-rights-record-of-the-united-states-in-2012/) It is highly suggested that you also prepare a human rights report of the United States.
If the United States has the right to argue about serious human rights abuses committed by your country, your country has also the same right to argue about serious human rights abuses committed by the United States. If serious human rights abuses in Guantánamo are allowed by the United States because the Guantánamo prison is out of the jurisdiction of the United States, North Korea has the same right to do so because both countries are independent sovereign states, having the same rights and obligations in international law. Accordingly, if North Korea, your country, will open a human rights abuse camp in Guantánomo, out of the jurisdiction of your country, your country will also be able to use the same argument that the United States uses to justify the serious human rights abuses in Guantánamo. Do you have any plan to stop committing all human rights violations in your country and to open a new detention camp somewhere in Guantánamo?
Please accept, Excellency, my highest considerations.
Truly yours,
Usa Dprk
His Excellency Kim Jong-un,
Re: PS.
I have the honor to refer to some “possible” human rights protection by your country.
Do you have any plan not only to stop committing all human rights violations in your country but also to open a human rights protection camp in Guantánamo, preferably next to the United States human rights abuse camp? If you will stop committing all human rights violations in your country and if you will open such human rights protection camp, accepting all the victims of human rights abuses now staying in the US Guantánamo prison, your reputation in the world will surely be drastically and positively changed.
Please accept, Excellency, my highest considerations.
Truly yours,
Usa Dprk