[Pnews] Still on hunger strike at Guantanamo

[Prisoner News]

  Still on hunger strike at Guantanamo

by Moath al-Alwi 
<http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/a/moath-al-alwi.html>
October 15, 2013 12:15PM ET

*http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/15/hunger-strike-guantanamo.html*
Commentary: One of the prison's few remaining hunger strikers speaks out 
about their plight

I write this after my return from the morning's force-feeding session 
here at Guantanamo Bay. I write in between bouts of violent vomiting and 
the sharp pains in my stomach and intestines caused by the force-feeding.

The U.S. government now claims that, among the 164 prisoners at 
Guantanamo, there are fewer than two dozen hunger strikers, down from 
well over 100 back in August. I am one of those remaining hunger 
strikers. I have been on hunger strike for almost nine months, since 
February.

The guards dragged me out of my cell at around 8:20 a.m. As they took 
me, shackled, past the other cells and toward the restraint chairs --- 
my brothers and I call them torture chairs --- I could barely breathe 
because of the smell. Some of my brothers are now tainting the walls of 
their cells and blocking the air-conditioning vents with their own feces 
in protest.

The force-feeding remains as painful and horrific as the last time I 
described it 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/07/201373145723725101.html>. 
The U.S. military prison staff's intent is to break our peaceful hunger 
strike. The result can be read all over my body. It is visible on my 
bloodied nose and in my nostrils, swollen shut from the thick tubes the 
nurses force into them. It is there on my jaundiced skin, because I am 
denied sunlight and sleep. It is there, too, in my bloated knees and 
feet and my ailing back, wrecked from prolonged periods spent in the 
torture chair and from the riot squad's beatings. You can even hear it 
in my voice: I can barely speak because they choke me every time they 
strap me into the chair.

No form of pressure is too cruel or petty for our captors. They have 
deprived me of medication for as long as I remain on hunger strike. They 
have also taken away electric razors necessary for proper grooming and 
require all hunger strikers to share a single razor, despite the serious 
health risks that this poses. A rash spread among some of my fellow 
prisoners because of this measure by prison authorities.

Not even our rare calls with our families are held sacred. Three weeks 
ago, as the guards took me to a telephone call with my family, they 
subjected me to a humiliating and unnecessary search of my private 
areas. I resisted peacefully, as best I could, and tried to reason with 
the guards. To avoid these humiliating searches, some of my fellow 
hunger strikers have abstained from calls with their loved ones or 
meetings with their attorneys.

Many brothers have ended their hunger strikes because of these brutal 
force-feeding practices and the cruel punishment inflicted by the prison 
guards and military medical staff.

Others have chosen to suspend their hunger strikes to give President 
Barack Obama time to make good on his renewed promise to release 
Guantanamo prisoners.

But as for my brothers and me, we will remain on hunger strike. We pray 
that the next thing we taste is freedom. It may be hard to believe, but 
one of my fellow prisoners now weighs only 75 pounds. Another weighed in 
at 67 pounds before they isolated him in another area of the prison 
facility. These men survive only by the grace of God. May God continue 
to sustain us all until we achieve our goal of justice.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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