Guantanamo hunger strike is prisoners’ only way to reclaim dignity

[KoKo]

Last edited Thu Mar 14, 2013, 10:01 AM - Edit history (4)

Guantanamo hunger strike is prisoners’ only way to reclaim dignity’
Published time: March 13, 2013 06:25
http://rt.com/usa/us-guantanamo-hunger-strike-824/

The detainee hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay’s maximum-security prison is a last-resort cry for help from those who have spent years in custody without being charged, and who have no hope of release, anti-war activist Sara Flounders told RT.

Most of the 130 terror suspects imprisoned in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay may be involved in a hunger strike that started in early March. The protest allegedly started after prison administrators confiscated inmates' personal belongings, including Korans – the overwhelming majority of Guantanamo detainees are devout Muslims from the Middle East.

RT: If the abuse the inmates are describing is true, surely there must have been a reason? Perhaps repeated transgressions? What do you think?

Sara Flounders: Certainly, it is not a valid theory. The treatment in Guantanamo from the very first moment that the prisoners were kidnapped from the other side of the world and brought to Guantanamo has been horrendous. And it is the organizations such as the Center for Constitutional Rights who have fought for the most elementary rights for these prisoners. And their hunger strikes are the only way of even making themselves heard over years and years without any hope of release, without any real charges.

It was a Center for Constitutional Rights study that took the government figures to confirm that 92 percent of all the prisoners held in Guantanamo really had no connection at all to Al-Qaeda. They were sort of bought and sold and brought to Guantanamo as part of the US war on terror, justified as part of that war and with no real standing.

And they are really just part of the thousands of prisoners held around the world in US secret prisons or in prison ships, secret bases. It is an enormous problem and they are also a part of the hundreds of Muslim prisoners in the US, who have been held, who have been framed on charges, who are held in solitary confinement and special management units.

RT: Why is it only Guantanamo that is talked about when this comes out?

SF: The US’s own publicity, that somehow this US base but off the US mainland gave them complete control and out of the hands of US courts. So its very existence was a challenge and this is where they claimed they were bringing high profile prisoners. But as I say 92 percent of them, I don’t know what kind of a failure rate is that, for those with no charges, and even those with whom they made specific charges, they’ve used all manners of torture, of waterboarding, of isolation and so on again and again. This really is really in every aspect a crime.

[idwiyo]

2. K&R

[KoKo]

3. Really...Does No One Care about this? If not then WHY?

Why do you not speak out and at least SAY why you Don't Care?

[KoKo]

4. ...2