If the strategy isn’t working, it must be time to double down:
(Reuters) – The U.S. military is sending additional medical personnel to the Guantanamo prison camp, where more than half the captives have joined a hunger strike to protest their open-ended detention, a camp spokesman said on Monday…
House said the new arrivals would include a doctor, nurses, corpsmen and medics, who will supplement the 100 medical personnel already on duty. Navy hospital corpsmen and Army medics are trained to provide emergency care and basic medical services.
“There was no specific trigger, other than the growing number of detainees that have chosen to hunger strike,” House said….
Forty-three prisoners had joined the hunger strike by April 13, when guards in riot gear swept through a communal prison and forced the detainees into one-man cells where they could be better monitored. Camp officials said the detainees had covered the security cameras and windows, blocking guards’ view.
The number refusing meals has grown steadily since then, and two prisoners tried to kill themselves by making nooses with their clothing, House said. Lawyers for the prisoners have said the hunger strike is more widespread than the military acknowledges, with between 100 and 130 detainees taking part.
More than half of Guantanamo’s prisoners have been cleared for release but Congress has put stringent restrictions on transfers. About two-thirds of those cleared for release are Yemenis and the Obama administration has halted repatriations to their homeland because of instability there.
The U.S. military counted 84 of the 166 prisoners as hunger strikers on Monday and was force-feeding 16 of them liquid meals through tubes inserted in their noses and down into their stomachs. Six were hospitalized for observation, House said.
NYMag, April 14th:
When guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison tried to move hunger-striking inmates living communally into individual cells on Saturday, the detainees did not go quietly. They fought back when guards moved in, using batons, broomsticks, and mop handles to resist the forced return to individual cells, so the guards fired rubber bullets that hit at least one inmate — the only injury being made public. The guards decided it was time to break up the inmates’ communal living situation because they had been covering up security cameras and windows…
But lawyers for both the inmates and the military, as well as the Red Cross, “agree that the hunger strike is also born of a deeper frustration that the Obama administration has abandoned any real effort to close the facility.” A lawyer for the inmates told CNN that the detainees, some of whom have been in Guantanamo Bay for ten years, were frustrated with not just their conditions but the sense of an unending legal limbo. “It leaves them with the prospect of the only way we leave Guantanamo is death,” attorney Carlos Warner said. “Unfortunately, I think the men are ready to embrace this.”
To second that, here’s a NYTimes op-ed from detainee Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, “Gitmo Is Killing Me”:
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…
PsiFighter37
Total fucking shitshow. Just like with Iraq, the Bushies never figured out how they were going to leave once they arrived. I don’t blame Obama too much for this because Congress are a bunch of spineless assholes when it comes to Guantanamo.
Corner Stone
Good God. These individuals simply have to be set free.
There is no other choice, and there never was.
Corner Stone
An unjudged man, a human being, preferring death over life in the state we’ve consigned him to.
Schlemizel
I read a thing about torture written by people who had experienced it. They all agreed that the worst thing was when the doctor came to see you. The doctor could patch you up, tell them how much more you could take, get you to a point you could feel more pain. They all hated seeing the doctor.
That has haunted me ever since I read it and when I read about medical staff in places like Gitmo I just want to weep
NotMax
Some prisoners languishing in Guantánamo longer than the Tsarnaev boys had been in the U.S.
Not implying any connection whatsoever.
jeannedalbret
Can anyone name an organization or campaign that is taking this on? Anything we can do other than write stern letter to local editor?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
From the IANAL file: Is it possible for Obama to pardon people in this non-charged/non-citizen state? Is that the only way out of this quagmire?
Another Halocene Human
This sucks. No snark.
Maude
@Corner Stone:
Yet the Republicans still call them enemy combatants and also some Dems. They won’t fund the closing of Gitmo.
Despicable creeps that are playing with people’s lives to hold up their own fantasies.
RobertDSC-eMac 1.25
Grotesque. Goddamned Congress.
Baud
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
Not a pardon, but maybe a reprieve, like Bush did to Scooter Libby. I’m afraid you’re right — that may be the only way around Congress.
MattR
@PsiFighter37:
I agree with that to a point. But I also think Obama bears some responsibility for the conditions the prisoners are living in at Gitmo, especially those who have been found to have done nothing wrong or pose no threat. I understand there are issues with finding a place to release them, but since we screwed them over we should be providing them with nice accomodations and a degree of freedom.
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): I am too lazy to look up the numbers but a significant percentage of the people still at Gitmo are eligible for release but they will be killed or imprisoned if sent back to their home countries and we can’t find any place who will take them. So even if you pardoned the whole batch, what then? It would be political suicide to grant them residency in the US.
Suffern ACE
Well, what next. Since it is unlikely that we are going to get anything done legislatively as we slide into the sea, we might as well make this the central issue. I wonder if the senate at least could take a vote to affirm once more that they favor having these prisoners starve to death.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@MattR:
Reprieve them and give them some dignity while they’re on the island and see about finding a place for them? I’m just spitballing here, but keeping them caged isn’t helping.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@efgoldman:
In some ways, it’s like Schrodinger’s Prisoners.
MattR
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): It definitely can’t hurt, if it is even legally possible. And I definitely agree we should be making their lives as comfortable as we can.
FYI, I found this comment I had left previously on this topic. It has numbers from a GAO report on Gitmo.
kindness
Guantanamo has to close if for no other reason than the soul of this country. That a political segment can play games with peoples lives as part of their propaganda….And the worst thing? Those very same politicians & their supporters think they are closest to ‘Our Founding Fathers’ view of things and all the while they ape the conduct of King George of England who we rebelled against for many of those same tactics.
Go figure.
OK, I’ll give them that they probably agree on slavery with the Founding Fathers, but I’m cutting them off after that.
Corner Stone
This situation is unimaginable. And absolutely unacceptable.
I don’t understand how anyone makes an excuse for continuing the ongoing. Obama will never run for office again. Sen Graham can go fuck himself as he commands about as many legions as Mr. Purr Puff at this point.
Suffern ACE
@MattR: so I assume the three groups (the convicted, the suspected, and the exonerated) aren’t all held in the same group. So do we know which group is on strike?
Corner Stone
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
Where, if anywhere, do they really exist?
MattR
@Suffern ACE: No idea. Could be some from each group. At least some are from the exonerated. The NY Times had an op-ed from one of them a couple weeks ago. It is probably safe to say that those living in communal areas were exonerated.
Chris
@kindness:
This.
It’s a fucking gulag and it will be remembered as such. This is what we blamed the Soviets and Saddam for and living proof of a system where there is no law and no justice.
Corner Stone
An oldie but a goodie at 3+ years ago now:
“Last year, I understood why, politically, the Obama administration chose to behave the way they did with the former administration, choosing to look forward rather than backwards. I didn’t like it at all, but I understood it.
I don’t know how that is a tenable position anymore (and it was always a bad moral compromise). This must be investigated, publicly and thoroughly, and people need to be brought to justice.”
–John Griffin Cole, Balloon Juice
Another Halocene Human
@MattR: Odd that countries that talked a lot of anti-colonial big talk like Cuba and Venezuela don’t welcome the wrong place, wrong time folks with open arms.
It’s not that I have a grievance against these countries (IMO US should take them, if it was done quietly who would fucking know or care? people are stupid) for not talking them. I have a grievance against emoprogs in my Facebook feed who think anybody who talks some shit about US imperialism is some sort of moral god. Just because you agree with someone on one thing doesn’t mean they’re an angel or right about everything. Oh wait, we’re talking about emoprogs. Well, the Bolivarian revolution just sold you out, FB feed polluters and trolls! Haven’t seen them take a single Gitmo detainee yet. Some island nation took the Uighurs.
Svensker
Obama may not be able to release these guys but he sure as hell should be making sure they live comfortably.
The whole thing is sick making.
One unremarked casualty of the Boston Bombers was the poor sods in Gitmo. Moqbel’s OpEd appeared the morning of the bombing and was starting to get some traction when the bombs went off. Knocked Gitmo right off everybody’s radar and, besides, Muslims! Ooga booga!
Librarian
I know this is not a popular thing to say around here, but Obama, not Congress, is ultimately responsible for what happens at Gitmo, including the conditions in which the prisoners are held. He’s the president, he’s responsible. He has to tell the Pentagon what to do instead of just letting them do whatever the fuck they want to do.