[Pnews] Guantanamo: 'Nobody can truly understand how we suffer'

[Prisoner News]

  A letter from Guantanamo: 'Nobody can truly understand how we suffer'


    Al-Alwi describes the humiliating and brutal treatment he suffers at
    Guantanamo.

Last updated: 13 Mar 2014 12:03
*http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/letter-from-guantanamo-nobody-c-201431385642747154.html*
Moath al-Alwi 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/moath-al-alwi.html>

Moath al-Alwi is a Yemeni national who has been in US custody since 
2002. He was one of the very first prisoners moved to Guantanamo, where 
the US military assigned him the Internment Serial Number 028.

*
March 10, 2014* - I write this letter, as I wrote my last, between bouts 
of violent vomiting and sharp pains in my stomach caused by this 
morning's force-feeding session. Reading news articles, you would think 
that we have stopped striking. Perhaps you might think that our protests 
had even been sated by government concessions. We may be trapped behind 
the walls of Guantanamo, but we will not be silenced.

I write this letter to tell you that we are still striking. We will not 
stop until we get our dignity back in this place and are allowed to 
return home to our families.

With President Barack Obama's blessing, Colonel Bogdan, the warden at 
Guantanamo, has instituted humiliating groin searches, especially when 
we are taken for phone calls with our lawyers or families. He has 
withheld our medical treatment and confiscated our legal papers and Qurans.

The Colonel has been quoted as saying that he knows how to discipline us 
because he has children at home. We are not his children and this is 
certainly not our home. We are grown men with families who no longer 
know what we look like.

Here, a peaceful hunger strike automatically places the prisoner on 
"disciplinary status", which involves being subjected to various forms 
of punishment. To discourage striking, the prisoner is moved from 
communal living to solitary confinement and is force-fed.

Because I decided to peacefully protest my imprisonment here, the 
special mattress and medical pillows prescribed for my chronic back 
pain, all of my underwear, my electric razor, and even my bar of soap 
and toothbrush have been confiscated.

I, too, am strapped down and force-fed for over an hour every single 
day. During the session, I am constantly vomiting the feeding solution 
into my lap. As I am carried back to my cell, I cannot help but vomit on 
the guards carrying me.

They put a Plexiglas face mask on my head to protect their clothes from 
my vomit. They tighten the facemask and press down on it, pushing it 
into my face. I almost suffocate because I am vomiting inside the 
facemask and am unable to breathe.

As I struggle for air, the guards make fun of me, laughing loudly. 
Frequently, they lie me down on my stomach in my cell and press my back 
forcefully, squeezing out any remaining feeding solution from the 
previous force-feeding session. The lightest of the guards weighs at 
least 190 lbs, while I weigh only 98 lbs; it is a wonder they do not 
break me entirely.

Aside from those imprisoned with me, nobody can truly understand how we 
suffer. The Colonel will not allow media into Guantanamo Bay, claiming 
he is protecting our privacy. No man here wants privacy from the media. 
The Colonel fears that if the media comes in and meets with the 
prisoners, all of this daily brutality will be exposed. Hopefully this 
letter serves that end.

There are currently 21 prisoners on hunger strike. I am one of the 16 
who are being force-fed. The government does not want the American 
people to know that we are still striking. They try to discourage us 
with solitary confinement and brutal treatment but we will not abandon 
our protest.

We will not be silent. They cannot hide us by refusing to report the 
number of protesters to the public. Refusing sustenance is the only 
peaceful voice of protest that we have; it is the only way to demand the 
attention of the US government and the American people to whom it is 
beholden.

Colonel Bogdan has explained our treatment by saying we are at war. But 
it has been 12 years and this is not a war. We are unarmed captives. I 
ask the American people, where is the freedom the US touts? Do you 
condone what your government is doing to us? I know that governments do 
not always represent the voices of their people, and I pray that the 
American people do not want this, and more, that they will do something 
to stop it.

*/Moath al-Alwi is a Yemeni national who has been in US custody since 
2002. He was one of the very first prisoners moved to Guantanamo, where 
the US military assigned him Internment Serial Number 028./*

*/The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not 
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy./*

-- 
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