Guantánamo Bay hunger strikes began during the middle of 2005, after detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp initiated two hunger strikes. Guantanamo captives initiated several widespread hunger strikes to protest their innocence, and the conditions of their confinement.[1][2][3][4] Other captives, like the men camp authorities asserted committed suicide, had committed themselves to long term hunger strikes, not shared by the other captives.
According to Andy Worthington, at least eighty captives's weights dropped to below 100 pounds (45 kg).[1]
Camp authorities responded by adding force-feeding captives to the camp's Standard Operating Procedures.[5] The started force-feeding, called "re-feeding", early in the camp's history. Human rights workers, and Physicians' professional associations, have criticized the use of force-feeding on mentally competent patients at Guantanamo.[1][6][7]
The first hunger strike ended on July 28, 2005, when prison authorities agreed to bring the base into compliance with the Geneva Conventions. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the strike had become so widespread that medics could not manage the need and elected to stop making their regular medical calls. The prisoners spent 26 days without food.[8]
According to human rights workers, the prison authorities had a waiver form they called upon detainees to sign if they wanted to refuse intravenous rehydration. The detainees had all been advised, by their lawyers, not to sign anything their lawyers hadn't reviewed.
One concession the American authorities acknowledge making was to supply the detainees with a bottle of clean water to drink with each meal.
The detainees reported, to their lawyers, that the prison authorities had agreed that they would begin to treat them in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. A week later, when they said that the prison authorities were not abiding by their commitment, they initiated a second hunger strike in early August.
Many of the individuals captured in Afghanistan were taken to be held at Guantanamo Bay without trial. These individuals were termed as “enemy combatants.” Until July 7, 2006, these individuals had been treated outside of the Geneva Conventions by the United States administration.
One of the hunger strikers, eighteen year old Omar Khadr, has told his lawyer that other triggers for the hunger strike include the detainees' ongoing concerns that the guards are showing disrespect for their religion, including turning on loud fans, playing loud music, and whistling, to disrupt the detainees' prayer meetings. Khadr reports that the prison authorities are not honoring their obligation by broadcasting the call to prayers four times a day rather than five. Khadr reports that many of the detainees resent that sometimes female GIs broadcast the call to prayer.
American Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico said on July 21, 2005 that fifty detainees were involved in the first hunger strike, and spokesman Brad Blackner said on September 2, 2005 that seventy six detainees were participating in the second hunger strike. Human-rights workers estimate that both hunger strikes have between 150 and 200 participants.
In September 2005, the New York Times reported that as many as 200 prisoners, a third of the camp, had taken to hunger striking, and that at least 20 of them were being fed through nasal tubes and given fluids intravenously. Major Weir, a spokesman at the base, said "We will not let them starve themselves to the point of causing harm to themselves." [9]
On October 26, 2005, a federal judge ordered the Government to provide information about the condition of detainees to lawyers representing the hunger strikers. The Government has contested the detainees' claims of rough treatment during forced feeding. The court's decision reflects major changes from the early years of the camp's operation, when almost no information was obtainable by attorneys. The Government did not immediately announce whether it would appeal the judge's ruling.
On November 4 U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated at a Pentagon news conference that he would not permit United Nations investigators to interview the striking detainees. He said the International Committee of the Red Cross would continue to have unlimited access to interview them.
On December 30, 2005, the military reported that there are eighty-four strikers as of Christmas Day, forty-six having joined that day.
In the April 14, 2008, edition of the New Yorker magazine, Jeffrey Toobin reported that there are currently only about ten hunger strikers at Guantanamo.
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