Deaths feared as at least 15 Guantanamo prisoners hospitalized in hunger s

[Judi Lynn]

Last update: September 10, 2005 at 6:52 PM
Deaths feared as at least 15 Guantanamo prisoners hospitalized in hunger strike
September 11, 2005 UPDA0911


• The latest: Scores or even hundreds of inmates at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay are entering the second month of a hunger strike that has led to the hospitalization of at least 15 prisoners, according to the Pentagon and defense lawyers.

Many detainees and their lawyers believe some fasters may starve to death to protest conditions at the controversial military outpost in Cuba. Thirteen inmates are being force-fed intravenously.

"People will definitely die," detainee Binyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian-born British resident, said in one of several statements from inmates that defense lawyers recently declassified.

"Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop the illegitimate internment of Irishmen without trial," Mohammed continued, referring to a famous Irish Republican Army inmate who died during a hunger strike in a British prison in 1981. "Nobody should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage."
(snip/...)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5607656.html

[riverwalker]

1. poem written by Sands in prison

Modern Times by Bobby Sands

It is said we live in modern times,
In the civilised year of 'seventy nine,
But when I look around, all I see,
Is modern torture, pain, and hypocrisy.

In modern times little children die,
They starve to death, but who dares ask why?
And little girls without attire,
Run screaming, napalmed, through the night afire.

And while fat dictators sit upon their thrones,
Young children bury their parents' bones,
And secret police in the dead of night,
Electrocute the naked woman out of sight.

In the gutter lies the black man, dead,
And where the oil flows blackest, the street runs red,
And there was He who was born and came to be,
But lived and died without liberty.

As the bureaucrats, speculators and presidents alike,
Pin on their dirty, stinking, happy smiles tonight,
The lonely prisoner will cry out from within this tomb,
And tomorrow's wretch will leave its mother's womb!

[quaoar]

2. Hunger strikers pledge to die in Guantánamo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1566197,%20%20%20%20%2000.html

Audrey Gillan
Friday September 9, 2005
The Guardian

More than 200 detainees in Guantánamo Bay are in their fifth week of a hunger strike, the Guardian has been told.
Statements from prisoners in the camp which were declassified by the US government on Wednesday reveal that the men are starving themselves in protest at the conditions in the camp and at their alleged maltreatment - including desecration of the Qur'an - by American guards.

The statements, written on August 11, have just been given to the British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. They show that prisoners are determined to starve them selves to death. In one, Binyam Mohammed, a former London schoolboy, said: "I do not plan to stop until I either die or we are respected.

"People will definitely die. Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop the illegitimate internment of Irishmen without trial. He had the courage of his convictions and he starved himself to death. Nobody should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage."

[struggle4progress]

3. kick

[struggle4progress]

4. 128 Guantanamo Detainees on Hunger Strike

The US military said on Tuesday that 128 detainees at the US naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been on a hunger strike and 18 are hospitalized.

Of the 18 protesters in hospital, 13 were being fed through tubes in the nose and five were receiving intravenous fluids, said Justin Behrens, a military spokesman.

The military has said that the strike began on Aug. 8, with 76 detainees refusing meals. Officials said last Friday the number had risen to 89.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit group that has filed legal challenges on behalf of the detainees, has said there were 210 inmates in the protest, and the detainees were protesting against allegations of beatings by guards and the US refusal to try them in civilian courts. <snip>

http://en1.chinabroadcast.cn/2239/2005-9-14/[e-mail]

[WhiteTara]

5. kick for freedom

:kick: