Marlene Obeid
A number of Afghan prisoners have begun a hunger strike, which they say they will pursue until death if their demands are not met, in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
According to reports from the US Department of Defense, cited by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), as of July 27, 52 prisoners had been on strike for about 19 days. Two recently released Afghan prisoners claimed, however, that up to 130 prisoners have taken this dramatic decision.
The prisoners are protesting abuses and torture, and have issued the following demands:
1. We need respect for our religion, including an end to the desecration of the Koran and religious discrimination;
2. We need fair trials with proper legal representation;
3. We need proper, human food and clean water. We are not given adequate amounts of food and the food is often old and inedible. The water is frequently dirty and tastes contaminated;
4. We need to see sunlight, and not be forced to go months without seeing daylight;
5. We need to know why we are in Camp 5 for so long, in some cases for over a year. What have the Camp 5 detainees done to be treated so much worse than the other detainees?
6. We need basic human rights like everyone else in the world — including real, effective medical treatment;
7. We need to be able to contact our families, and write to them and receive letters. Some prisoners have not received any of the letters sent by their families, their families have not received any of the prisoners' recent letters, and this is a widespread problem across the camp;
8. We need the "level system" of various camps and privilege levels to be abandoned and everyone treated equally;
9. We need a neutral body to observe the situation and report publicly about the conditions at Guantanamo.
According to Mamdouh Habib, former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was released in January without charge, prisoners at Guantanamo often go on hunger strikes. Most of them "do not want to go on living", he told me in a recent interview, adding that they stop eating because any other form of suicide is almost impossible. Habib said that while he was detained he went on a hunger strike for 45 days, during which guards forcibly injected him with intravenous feeders and dragged him, in shackles, to an interrogation room, where he was kicked and bashed.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, August 3, 2005.
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