Briefing

Report on Guantanamo Bay hunger strike

23.01.06

The following is a report by Reprieve on the Guantánamo Bay hunger strike. All information contained in this report, which comes from multiple sources, is “unclassified;” however, this should not be read as an assertion that all the available information concerning the hunger strike has been unclassified. In compliance with the Department of Defense regulations, information that has not been deemed “unclassified” may not be disseminated publicly.

The Guantánamo hunger strike has entered a new and more dangerous phase. There is almost unanimous international agreement that the prisoners’ complaints are justified. On November 21, 2005, giving evidence to senior British parliamentarians, Prime Minister Tony Blair said that detention at the camp “has got to be brought to an end.” More recently, on January 13, 2006, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel called on President Bush to close the base.

Meanwhile, the military’s response to the hunger strike has evolved from a sensible effort to negotiate with the prisoners (between July 26 and August 11, 2005); to an intransigent refusal to compromise since August 11, 2005; to the current position, where the military is punishing prisoners who assert their right to take part in a non-violent protest.

The prisoners have been forced to change their demands. In July 2005, they had three tiers of complaints – first, the ultimate issue of fair trials to all 500 prisoners; second, specific top level issues in the camps (continued desecration of the Qur’an; continued detention of those found innocent by the CSRT process; isolation punishment of juvenile prisoners); third, issues involving day to day conditions of confinement (unsanitary water, lack of appropriate medical care, etc.).

Because the U.S. military has now refused to negotiate over any issue concerning the prisoners’ treatment, the prisoners are left with no option but to focus solely on the issue of their lack of due process of law. The hunger strikers have therefore now vowed to refuse to eat until they are either released, or fairly charged and tried. The U.S. military action has therefore raised the stakes in the hunger strike to the point where it becomes impossible to resolve the strike without a wholesale change in Washington policy. This, in turn, exponentially increases the probability that prisoners will die from the strike.

“The military is quintessentially ill-suited to running this prison,” said Reprieve Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith. “Because they refuse to compromise, and expect everyone to obey ‘orders,’ the military leaves the prisoners no option but to continue with their hunger strike to the death. This is desperately dangerous for the prisoners, of course, but it also raises the inevitable spectre of a Muslim prisoner dying on Guantánamo soil, which will cause greater international outrage than even the desecration of the Qur’an.”

1. Punishment of Hunger Strikers

The U.S. military has instituted rules whereby all those who engage in a hunger strike are subject to immediate punishment. If a prisoner refuses three meals (one day) without showing that it is an official day of fasting, the prisoner is deemed to be in violation of the rules. He is then deprived of all his “comfort items,” leaving him with nothing but shirt, trousers, flip-flops, toothbrush, toothpaste and a small bar of soap.

Indeed, the treatment of strikers has included taking them to Romeo and November blocks, which have replaced Camp V as the isolation punishment blocks. This has included the punishment of at least three of the prisoners who have been found innocent at their CSRT’s (Combatant Status Review Tribunals), who had hitherto been transferred to Camp Iguana, where their treatment was far more liberal. Romeo has historically been the block where prisoners were stripped of all clothes but shorts and t-shirts, in violation of Islamic sensitivities that mandate covering from the knees to the navel. (Full details of the treatment of prisoners in Romeo and November have not been unclassified.)

Because of the hunger strike, in some of the prison the military has removed the covers from the toilet and shower, leaving the prisoners in the humiliating position of having to do their toilet naked, in public view.

Reprieve calls on President Bush immediately to cease the punishment of prisoners who non-violently exercise their right to protest. Reprieve reminds President Bush of the following statement that he made on July 122, 2005, with respect to Akbar Ganji, an imprisoned Iranian journalist:

On July 12, 2005 the White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement that the US president, George W. Bush, called on Iran to release Ganji “immediately and unconditionally.” “Mr. Ganji is sadly only one victim of a wave of repression and human rights violations engaged in by the Iranian regime. His calls for freedom deserve to be heard. His valiant efforts should not go in vain. The president calls on all supporters of human rights and freedom, and the United Nations, to take up Ganji’s case and the overall human rights situation in Iran.”

“Mr. Ganji, please know that as you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you,” the statement said. … “Through his now monthlong hunger strike, Mr. Ganji is demonstrating that he is willing to die for his right to express his opinion,” McClellan said. “President Bush is saddened by recent reports that Mr. Ganji’s health has been failing and deeply concerned that the Iranian government has denied him access to his family, medical treatment and legal representation.”

As President Bush conceded in his statement, a hunger strike is a respected and non-violent method of challenging unfair treatment of prisoners, used by many from the Suffragettes (challenging the denial of the vote to women) to Mahatma Ghandi (challenging the denial of freedom to India). The prisoners in Guantánamo have justified complaints, and have brought them to the attention of the world by this means. On November 1, 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to the hunger strike as a group of detainees going “on a diet” to get press attention, and argued that such actions prove that they are members of al Qaida. It demeans the sanctity of the rule of law, as well as the United States itself, when such comments are made. Reprieve calls upon the Administration to desist from such statements, and deal with the prisoners in a humane fashion.

2. The Christmas Day Hunger Strike

The military’s position has – unfortunately but predictably – drawn the lines much more clearly for the prisoners, increasing numbers of whom are now keen to join what has been dubbed by prisoners as the FFC (Force Feeding Club). As a consequence, the situation is becoming increasingly serious.

Public statements by the U.S. military concerning the number of prisoners on the hunger strike are wildly inaccurate. Most recently, the U.S. military has acknowledged that there are 17 prisoners being force fed, and a total of 22 prisoners refusing food. This far underestimates the true situation.

Many prisoners chose Christmas Day (December 25, 2005) to return to a hunger strike because the United States would be sitting down to a plentiful Christmas dinner at the same time as many prisoners in Guantánamo entered their 136th day without eating.

However, because they would be punished for joining the hunger strike, most prisoners joined it in secret, accepting trays of food but disposing of the food without eating it. The unclassified estimated number of those involved in the strike is as many as half (250) of the total of 500 prisoners. (Details of the numbers of hunger strikers, camp by camp, has not been unclassified by the U.S. military.)

3. Creation of Isolation Camps

The military has created isolation camps to keep the long-term hunger strikers apart from each other, and apart from the moral and human support of the other prisoners. For example, Camp Echo has been turned into a force feeding institution. Camp Echo is comprised of isolation cells, where the prisoner has no access to any other prisoner, and where he can be forbidden from talking to any other human being. The formerly gravel paths have been paved over with concrete, so that the desperately weak prisoners can be moved around on wheelchairs. Guards have been practicing taking prisoners in wheelchairs out to the ‘recreation cage’ – a 3m x 3m cage inside the camp.

More than 30 prisoners are currently being force fed. Some of the prisoners – including Abu Bakah Al Shamrani and Abu Anas, both from Yemen – have been without solid food since August 2005, and are reportedly close to death. Mr. Al Shamrani is reportedly only 70 lbs (5 stone). (The full list of prisoners who are being force fed has not been unclassified by the U.S. military.)

One of the prisoners in Camp Echo is Shaker Aamer, a long term British resident whose wife Zennira and four children, all British, live in London. When his lawyer, Reprieve Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith, visited him on Thursday, January 5, 2006, Mr. Aamer had a feeding tube up his right nostril, taped to his neck. He removed this tube by pulling it slowly out of his nose. He was in obvious physical pain as he did this. There was a harsh reddening of the skin on Mr. Aamer’s neck where the tape had held the tube in place.

The tube was 43 cm long, with a metal insertion in the lower part. There was an attachment on the top allowing for the injection of liquid nutrients into the prisoner. The bottom 10 cm was darkly stained a deep red colour from being in his stomach. Consistent questions have arisen concerning the recycling of these tubes from one prisoner to another. Mr. Stafford Smith asked for permission to remove the tube from the institution for testing, both to ascertain the cause of the colouring of the lower section, and to determine whether there were any traces of DNA from another user. An anonymous senior officer of the Camp Echo guard declined permission for counsel to take this tube out of the camp.

In a statement recently unclassified, Mr. Aamer announced that his own hunger strike began on November 2, now 81 days ago. He says: “The British government refuses to help me. What is the use of my wife being British? I thought Britain stood for justice, but they helped British citizens, and then abandoned us – people who have lived in Britain for years, and who have British wives and children. I hold the British government responsible for my death as I do the Americans.”

4. Official Deception concerning Force Feeding

The U.S. military has issued various statements concerning the hunger strikes and the force feeding of prisoners. The U.S. military has insisted that most prisoners are voluntarily accepting nasal intubation and liquid nutrients. The U.S. military has referred to forced feeding as “assisted feeding.” Reprieve calls upon the U.S. military to cease this deceptive practice immediately.

The prisoners have long been subjected to ERF (Emergency Reaction Force) procedures if they refuse nutrition. This involves the ERF team of five or six soldiers dressed in black riot gear restraining the prisoner while medical personnel force the tube into his nose. After one or more such abusive procedures, most prisoners will ‘agree’ to the insertion of the tube, but this is only because they have been intimidated into undergoing the process. To call this ‘voluntary’ is simply false.

Reprieve reminds the military of the following rule contained in paragraph 5 of the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo (Guidelines for Physicians Concerning Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Relation to Detention and Imprisonment, adopted by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975 and editorially revised at the 170th Council Session, Divonne-les-Bains, France, May 2005):

Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially. The decision as to the capacity of the prisoner to form such a judgment should be confirmed by at least one other independent physician. The consequences of the refusal of nourishment shall be explained by the physician to the prisoner.

The forced feeding of prisoners who are competent to make their own decisions is unethical and must stop.

That is not to say that prisoners should die. Naturally, Reprieve is strongly opposed to the senseless sacrifice of human life. However, as Reprieve Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith has said: “The genuine complaints of the Guantánamo prisoners do not dissolve in the liquid nutrients that are forced into their noses. This will simply exacerbate their sense of injustice, and increase the danger that one or more of them will die through starvation. The only way to resolve this issue is for the U.S. military to respond humanely and realistically, changing the intolerable conditions of the prisoners being held beyond the rule of law.”

5. Indifference to the Catastrophic Political Consequences of the Death of a Muslim in Guantánamo Bay

Whether a prisoner dies in the immediate future from the hunger strike or not, it is inevitable that one of the 500 prisoners, many in ill health, will die in the months to come. “Guantánamo Bay has long been a public relations catastrophe for the United States, and for the cause of democracy worldwide,” said Reprieve Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith. “The prospect of a prisoner’s death looms like the iceberg in front of the Titanic, and the ship is currently steaming full speed ahead.”

When a prisoner dies, Islamic religious tradition requires a speedy burial, traditionally well within 24 hours. It will be impossible for a prisoner’s body to be returned for a funeral and burial in, for example, Yemen within this time. Anyway, the arrival of the body of a dead Muslim prisoner from Guantánamo in a Muslim country will be greeted with an extraordinary, and highly negative, response.

“Burial has to be as soon as possible. You’re meant to wash the body, do the funeral prayer over it, and then the burial. That should be done as soon as logistics allow,” said Imam Qasim Rashid, Director of Al Khair Educational Institute, in Croydon, just south of London.

Reprieve also foresees grave problems with the mandatory American rules concerning post-mortem autopsies. While only an independent autopsy will identify cause of death, and potentially dispel allegations that a prisoner died directly at the hands of the United States, to conduct such a procedure is also fraught with cultural concerns.

“Culturally, it is considered offensive to perform an autopsy on a Muslim. There is a prophetic saying that you should treat the dead body as you would treat it in life, and that it must be returned to God as given,” said Dr. Adnan Siddiqui (+44 (0)7956 196229), a Muslim doctor in general practice in London. “Perhaps those in the West might be used to autopsies, but to the many millions of people in traditional Muslim countries, the idea of chopping a person up, and putting them back together in a bag, would be considered a horror. It would cause outrage.”

The medical status of these prisoners is an urgent matter, but the facilities for urgent classification review of materials from Guantánamo have not been operational. Therefore, review will take at least a month to complete. Pending classification review of the statements obtained from the prisoners, the lawyers for the prisoners are forbidden by U.S. military rules from commenting further on these issues.