posted April 22, 2013 11:58 AM            

A week after a raid that put Guantanamo Bay's largest and most communal prison camp under lockdown, the number of detainees the U.S. military says are participating in a 10-week-long hunger strike has grown to 63 of the 166 men held at the camp -- more than one-third of the men incarcerated there, according to the Defense Department.

Just a week ago, the Pentagon's official tally was 42 men on hunger strike at the prison camp.

Fifteen of the hunger strikers are currently being force-fed liquid nutrients, "to preserve life or prevent serious self-harm," said Guantanamo spokesman Capt. Robert Durand. The process involves a detainee being strapped to a chair and having Ensure poured into a plastic tube that runs down his nose and throat.

In the past eight days, Durand said two detainees had tried to commit suicide by hanging themselves. The U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Navy base in southern Cuba, has designated seven of the nine detainee deaths at Guantanamo since it opened in 2002 as suicides.

The military commander at Guantanamo, Rear Admiral John Smith, ordered the early morning April 13 raid on Camp Six, because guards could no longer see inside the facility, Durand said. Detainees had covered up 147 of the 160 security cameras and hung sheets blocking the guards' view of the common areas.
[...]
Last Saturday's raid came the day after a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only independent group allowed access to the detainees, departed after three weeks at the base. The ICRC does not comment publicly on its findings, but it opposes force-feedings.

"We raise issues bilaterally to maintain access and hopefully impact the situations we work from within," said ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno.

Captain Durand disputed an Op-Ed column by detainee Samir Naji al-Hasan Moqbel published April 15 in the New York Times stating two detainees now weighed less than 100 pounds.

"None of the new hunger strikers has gone below 100 pounds," Durand said. He said one detainee who has been hunger striking for years did drop to 90 pounds last year but recently weighed 120 pounds.

In a Washington federal court on Monday, detainee attorneys lost a motion seeking an order for the military to cease what the lawyers claim is retaliation against hunger strikers, such as allegedly depriving them of clean drinking water and keeping cells at chilly temperatures. The claims have been made by detainees, including Moqbel, in statements via their attorneys.

The motion was filed on behalf of hunger-striking detainee Masaab Omar al-Madhwani, 32, from Yemen, who says he has refused food and for more than a month.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan denied the motion.

"The court wrongly ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to provide any of the requested relief," said attorney Mari Newman, from Denver, who represents al-Madhwani and four other detainees.

"Judge Hogan's ruling that the courts have no jurisdiction to order humanitarian and life-saving relief for Mr. al-Madhwani is yet another blow in an unbroken record of every branch of our government abdicating responsibility for lives of the innocent men that it has tortured and imprisoned for over a decade," Newman said.

Newman and other detainee attorneys say, besides discontent over more invasive cell inspections, the underlying cause of the hunger strike is indefinite detention without charges coupled with the knowledge that half the detainees have been approved for transfer but are not leaving.

"I have no reason to believe that I will ever leave this prison alive," Madhwani stated in a written declaration. "Indefinite detention is the worst form of torture. I am an innocent man. I have never done anything against the United States, and I never would."

"You can understand why people are going on a hunger strike if they feel like they have no other option," said Zeke Johnson, Director of Amnesty International USA's Security with Human Rights Campaign.

Yeah. Being held in prison despite the fact that they know you are innocent may be the greatest long term psychological torture there is. (To me, anyway --- living with that kind of injustice is just unimaginable.)

But it isn't just psychological torture. It's physical torture. And it's been going on at Guantanamo from the beginning:

The stories coming out of Gitmo are remarkably consistent. This is not an unusual case. Indeed, the attempted suicide rate down there is astronomical, but after this was publicized, in a typical Bushian move, they have decided to simply give attempted suicidee another, less disturbing, name. From the Vanity Fair article:

In the camp's acute ward, a young man lies chained to his bed, being fed protein-and-vitamin mush through a stomach tube inserted via a nostril. "He's refused to eat 148 consecutive meals," says Dr. Louis Louk, a naval surgeon from Florida. "In my opinion, he's a spoiled brat, like a small child who stomps his feet when he doesn't get his way." Why is he shackled? "I don't want any of my guys to be assaulted or hurt," he says.

By the end of September 2003, the official number of suicide attempts by inmates was 32, but the rate has declined recently-not because the detainees have stopped trying to hang themselves but because their attempts have been reclassified. Gitmo has apparently spawned numerous cases of a rare condition: "manipulative self-injurious behavior," or S.I.B. That, says chief surgeon Captain Stephen Edmondson, means "the individual's state of mind is such that they did not sincerely want to end their own life." Instead, they supposedly thought they could get better treatment, perhaps even obtain release. In the last six months, there have been 40 such incidents.

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Now one could presume that JW would say something along the lines of: Waterboard them till they eat!

Me? I am a Geneva Convention kinda gal

posted April 22, 2013 12:35 PM              

i understand that closing it altogether has been blocked, but that doesn't mean we can allow it to remain a torture factory.

posted April 22, 2013 09:25 PM            

Change the language to suit your needs...

By the end of September 2003, the official number of suicide attempts by inmates was 32, but the rate has declined recently-not because the detainees have stopped trying to hang themselves but because their attempts have been reclassified. Gitmo has apparently spawned numerous cases of a rare condition: "manipulative self-injurious behavior," or S.I.B. That, says chief surgeon Captain Stephen Edmondson, means "the individual's state of mind is such that they did not sincerely want to end their own life." Instead, they supposedly thought they could get better treatment, perhaps even obtain release. In the last six months, there have been 40 such incidents.

posted April 23, 2013 12:08 AM              

the parallel is striking.

posted April 26, 2013 03:04 PM            

feeding chair

The camp's medical staff were authorized to strap captives into the restraint chair, for their force-feeding, and a period long enough afterwords to prevent the captives defeating their force-feeding by inducing vomiting.
Note the plastic bag protecting the seat cushion. Guantanamo captives report they were routinely immobilized so long they could no longer control their bladder and bowels and soiled themselves.
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/App12_Pt13.pdf

quote:

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Torture's Long Shadow

By Vladimir Bukovsky
Sunday, December 18, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, England

One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it."

This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain's amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.

This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.

Apart from sheer frustration and other adrenaline-related emotions, investigators and detectives in hot pursuit have enormous temptation to use force to break the will of their prey because they believe that, metaphorically speaking, they have a "ticking bomb" case on their hands. But, much as a good hunter trains his hounds to bring the game to him rather than eating it, a good ruler has to restrain his henchmen from devouring the prey lest he be left empty-handed. Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.

Even talking about the possibility of using CID treatment sends wrong signals and encourages base instincts in those who should be consistently delivered from temptation by their superiors. As someone who has been on the receiving end of the "treatment" under discussion, let me tell you that trying to make a distinction between torture and CID techniques is ridiculous. Long gone are the days when a torturer needed the nasty-looking tools displayed in the Tower of London. A simple prison bed is deadly if you remove the mattress and force a prisoner to sleep on the iron frame night after night after night. Or how about the "Chekist's handshake" so widely practiced under Stalin -- a firm squeeze of the victim's palm with a simple pencil inserted between his fingers? Very convenient, very simple. And how would you define leaving 2,000 inmates of a labor camp without dental service for months on end? Is it CID not to treat an excruciatingly painful toothache, or is it torture?

Now it appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's "show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even understanding what he had signed.

I know from my own experience that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it is about self-respect and human dignity. If I break, I will not be able to look into a mirror. But if I don't, my interrogator will suffer equally. Just try to control your emotions in the heat of that battle. This is precisely why torture occurs even when it is explicitly forbidden. Now, who is going to guarantee that even the most exact definition of CID is observed under such circumstances?

But if we cannot guarantee this, then how can you force your officers and your young people in the CIA to commit acts that will scar them forever? For scarred they will be, take my word for it.

In 1971, while in Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB interrogation jail), I went on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice (the KGB wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead). The moment was most inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court, and they had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.

The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the morning and did it all over again, for 10 days, when the guards could stand it no longer. As it happened, it was a Sunday and no bosses were around. They surrounded the doctor: "Hey, listen, let him drink it straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too, you silly old fool." The doctor was in tears: "Do you think I want to go to jail because of you lot? No, I can't do that. . . . " And so they stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out of my nose. On the 12th day, the authorities surrendered; they had run out of time. I had gotten my lawyer, but neither the doctor nor those guards could ever look me in the eye again.

Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.

If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?

Finally, think what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend itself without resorting to torture. . . . "

Off we go, back to the caves.

Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities, is the author of several books, including "To Build a Castle" and "Judgment in Moscow." Now 63, he has lived primarily in Cambridge, England, since 1976.

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posted April 26, 2013 03:12 PM            

You people have such misplaced loyalties. I cry with frustration that intelligent people( of whom are ALL Knowflakes) could be so deceived and ignorant about right and wrong.

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 26, 2013 03:51 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by katatonic:
You have no sympathy for the teller of that story? Who was a nonviolent human rights activist?

Then you are as bad as the terrorists imo. bye

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Your opinions have so many holes in them that one would not take them too much to heart

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 26, 2013 03:58 PM            

Nor, take the time to educate herself, maybe that is part of being a savant?

you know, therefore it is so.

posted April 26, 2013 04:02 PM            

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 26, 2013 04:11 PM              

Nuff said. One less foul mouth to listen to for me! 's all good.

posted April 26, 2013 04:11 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Node:
Okey dokey

take your passive aggressive smilies and put em from where you speak from.

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Remember Peace and Love, Nodey. You know you are better than those small minded snipes!

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 26, 2013 04:16 PM            

Gitmo Detainees Say They were Sold

posted April 26, 2013 05:11 PM              

So now the flatterer makes sn appearance. Divide and conquer ... Not.

posted April 26, 2013 05:22 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by katatonic:
A real savant might not have to read the material, but s/he would still know what it waa about, not "answwr" something that hasn't been said...

So now the flatterer makes sn appearance. Divide and conquer ... Not.

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Just don't call me an idiot savant

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 26, 2013 05:23 PM              

Judas may or may have not been a "real" person, but he exists in all chapters of history.

posted April 26, 2013 07:29 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by katatonic:
No wonder there is so much resistance to releasing these people, that would be letting the worms out of the can.

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posted April 27, 2013 01:40 AM            

Faith:
that is a darn good point. Who is allowing the voice? Who is it useful for?

Other than those who have been cleared...
One would imagine that the Obama admin are the ones who gain most, if the public outcry becomes loud enough.

EX: many of those who opposed background checks are having their ratings plummet w/ their constituencies.

posted April 27, 2013 02:01 AM              

I heard one of the lawyers on the case tonight on radio. It is not just hunger strikers...one man he mentioned is beaten three times daily becaise he has refused his meds...i guess they haven't the heart to force them on him?