Guest blog from Aisha Maniar, courtesy of
'one small window' where it was first published
What does a person have to do to get noticed nowadays? In the twenty
first century, enduring more than a decade of torture and arbitrary
detention without charge, trial or any prospect of release is not
enough. A mass hunger strike, involving the use of
torturous force feeding methods, the firing of plastic bullets, and
intrusive body searches, such as that currently taking place at Guantánamo Bay, entering its 100
th day on Friday 17
th May, might get you a little further. A
life-and-death scenario is what it takes to remind the world of the injustice that is Guantánamo Bay.
The US military has yet to admit the full scale of the situation,
with the current numbers reported to be on hunger strike at around 100
of the 166 remaining prisoners and over 30 reported to be force fed,
including British residents
Shaker Aamer and
Ahmed Belbacha.
This follows weeks of denial by both the US authorities and the
mainstream media, only becoming newsworthy when violence entered the
scene on
13 April.
The use of force to quell a hunger strike that arose on 6 February in response to the
deteriorating treatment of prisoners,
including the use of rubber bullets against them in January, appears to
be a counterproductive method of dealing with the issue at hand. There
has been no effort whatsoever to engage with or respond to the demands
of the hunger strikers or to bring it to an end.
The hunger strike has undoubtedly brought Guantánamo Bay back into the public eye, even prompting
Barack Obama
to state “I’m going to go back at it [closing Guantánamo] because I
think it’s important.” One of the triggers for the mass hunger strike
was despair at his failure to keep his promise to close Guantánamo, and
the prisoners’
fear that the only real way out is in a coffin.
Perhaps the latest political rhetoric is just a test to see who has
been paying attention. In the past few months, Barack Obama has
authorised the use of force feeding rather than end the hunger strike,
and plastic bullets, which can be fatal. Furthermore, just one week
before the hunger strike started, the newly re-elected president closed
the office he had
opened to work on closing Guantánamo.
The recent debate on Guantánamo Bay has largely recycled old,
circular arguments. Congress is allegedly a sticking point, blocking
progress on the closure of Guantánamo but may agree to a
$200 million renovation of the prison.
The debate on force feeding hunger strikers is non-existent;
medical and legal ethics do not allow it. The
UN has described the practice at Guantánamo as “torture”. This has not prevented the US from force feeding hunger striking Connecticut prisoner
Bill Coleman
in the same manner for five years. The issue of possible recidivism in
releasing cleared prisoners, a favourite of proponents of Guantánamo, is
also moot; one has to have offended in order to reoffend.
Barack Obama once described Guantánamo Bay as a “misguided
experiment”, except that on so many levels he knows that is not the
case. A successful social experiment in peddling the politics of
mistrust and fear, it is perhaps the greatest symbol of the abuse of
power this century. The US keeps Guantánamo open because it is
expedient, because it can, because it is a two-finger salute to the rest
of the world: “screw with us, and you will be next”.
A legal monstrosity exists, yet Barack Obama has long known what he
has to do to close Guantánamo. The question is not so much how, but
when? Will it take further fatalities of innocent men to come closer to
an answer? The situation at Guantánamo has been an emergency for far
longer than 100 days. There is no place for rhetoric: there are no
popularity contests or elections to be won, just lives to be saved.
If there is a debate to be had, it does not appear to be happening.
The same applies to the US’ allies, such as the British government. In a
backbench debate
in Parliament last month on the case of British resident Shaker Aamer,
the Foreign Office gave the same noncommittal answers to relevant
questions by MPs it has given for years. It is highly unlikely that Mr
Aamer’s case, or the hunger strike, were raised during David Cameron’s
visit to Washington earlier this week, in spite of
government assurances it is actively pursuing his case.
Hunger strikes are an ultimate act of desperation by those who have
no other means to protest injustice. It is a reflection of the clear
failure of all those who could make a difference and have not over the
past 11 years. Former Guantánamo military prosecutor
Colonel Morris Davis stated “A large part of [the] Obama legacy depends on how this issue breaks. It’s his choice to lead or lose.”
The hunger strike has not missed the attention of everyone, and for the past three months, campaigns such as the
London Guantánamo Campaign in the UK and organisations such as
Witness Against Torture and
World Can’t Wait have been holding protests and
solidarity actions about an emergency the world would still rather ignore. The hunger strike will enter its 100
th day on 17
th
May and shows no sign of ending. Six prisoners have been on hunger
strike and force fed for over one year; left to their own devices, they
prefer death over indefinite detention. Hunger strikes can be fatal in
the longer term;
seven of the nine deaths at Guantánamo Bay, allegedly suicides, were prisoners who had previously taken part in hunger strikes.
To mark this 100
th day milestone and given the
emergency of this situation, individuals and groups from around the world have come together to organise a
weekend of protest on 17-19 May, calling on people to take action and
fast for 24 hours if they can. A
successful petition
with more than 200,000 signatures gathered in around a fortnight put
together by Colonel Morris Davis will be delivered to the White House on
Friday 17 May. Protests will be held in various cities and towns across
the world, with at least five planned across the UK, including a
demonstration outside the
US Embassy in London. The hacktivist group
Anonymous
is also planning online actions over the weekend and others have
Twitter storms planned over the three days using the hashtag #OpGTMO.
Citizen actions around the world are an opportunity to show solidarity
with the hunger strikers in different ways in different places. With
lawyers visiting the prisoners reporting their worsening health and
physical conditions, later may be too late.
