Guantanamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike

By Tim Golden, The New York Times

A long-term hunger strike has broken out at the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with more than a dozen prisoners subjecting themselves to daily force-feeding to protest their treatment, military officials and lawyers for the detainees say.

Lawyers for several hunger strikers said their clients’ actions were driven by harsh conditions in a new maximum security complex. About 160 of the roughly 385 Guantanamo detainees have been moved to the complex since December.

Thirteen detainees are now on hunger strikes, the largest number to endure the force-feeding regimen on an extended basis since early 2006, when the military broke a long-running strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners into restraint chairs while they are fed by plastic tubes inserted through their nostrils.

The hunger strikers are now monitored so closely that they have virtually no chance to starve themselves. Yet their persistence underscores how the struggle between detainees and guards at Guantanamo has continued even as the military has tightened its control in the past year.

(More)