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Fifty-two inmates at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prison for foreign terrorism suspects have begun a hunger strike to protest their detention. The detainees, among 500 al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the US Navy base, have refused at least nine consecutive meals, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo said in a statement today. South Australian David Hicks is not one of the hunger strikers, his civilian lawyer David McLeod said. McLeod said he had spoken with Hicks' US military appointed lawyer Major Michael Mori after learning of the hunger strike. "We're pretty sure he isn't one of them (hunger strikers), I would have heard by now if he was," McLeod said. Lawyers for some detainees said Guantánamo prisoners had planned in late June to begin a hunger strike to express frustration over "their indefinite detention and the inhuman conditions at Guantánamo," according to a statement from the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized the United States for indefinitely detaining suspects at the Guantánamo prison camp, which was opened on the base in January 2002. Former prisoners have said they were tortured there. Many of the prisoners at Guantánamo have been held for more than three years. Only a handful have been charged. CCR, citing recently declassified notes taken by lawyers who visited inmates, said the hunger strike is a "peaceful, nonviolent strike until demands are met" and calls for "starvation until death". US military officials said detainees who refuse food are given medical treatment including intravenous hydration, water, the sports energy drink Gatorade, a nutritional supplement called Ensure and are admitted to hospital if needed. "Indications are that this is a temporary effort by some detainees to protest their continued detention," they said in the statement. CCR, which helps represent Guantánamo inmates, said the hunger strikers also planned to boycott showers and recreational time and some would refuse to wear clothes. The prisoners are demanding clean food and water, better medical care, more access to sunlight, contact with relatives, greater respect for their religion - including an end to desecration of the Koran - and fair trials with proper legal representation, the CCR statement said. "They have languished in legal limbo for years with no fair trial and no definitive resolution of their legal status," CCR deputy legal director Barbara Olshansky said. "All the while, our government continues to deprive them of the basic dignities that every human being is entitled to." The US government has released more than 200 detainees from Guantánamo, some of whom were transferred to detention centers in their home countries. |
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