GUANTANAMO, from page 1
I broke fast at communion on Easter
morning — followed by a salad back at my
apartment — and I did so with a sense of
guilt, anxiety and failure.
Would strikers persist to the point of
death? Or would staff doctors call a halt?
And how do doctors work in a prison camp
anyway, and still keep their Hippocratic vow
to keep the sick “from harm and injustice?”
The week had opened a place in my
thought and prayer for 166 men I will never
meet.
May they hold out, and may they take
nourishment in hope, until they be
nourished by food.
n Thursday, April 11, as the hunger
strike entered its third month and some
of the detainees having lost 30 or more
pounds, WAT called a national Day of Action
to Close Guantanamo and End Indefinite
Detention. In New York and Washington,
D.C., protesters in orange jump suits and
black hoods held up signs: “Obama Close
Gitmo” and I died waiting for change.”
In Portland, Linda Olson-Osterlund
devoted her morning KBOO show, A Deeper
Look, to the crisis at Guantanamo. She
interviewed Pardisss Kebriaei, one of the
lawyers with the Center for Constitutional
Rights, the New York organization that
O
orchestrates the legal defense of detainees,
This is not who we are, I told him.
including recruiting several years ago
He roared back at m,e: There are people
Oregon Public Defenders to take on seven
out there who just want to let them die. We
of the cases.
have to be responsible for their well-being.
Olson-Osterlund, who easily switches
I remembered
hats, the interviewer becoming the activist,
reading that during
told her listeners to call the White House
the big hunger strikes
and remind President Obama of his
of 2005 at
campaign promises to close this black hole.
Guantanamo, some of
Meanwhile, WAT had announced a
the guards kicked and
“rolling fast,” and I signed up for two more *
punched prisoners
days, committing also to write a detainee (I
who resisted being
chose at random a Russian from Andy
strapped down and
Worthington’s list), and to phone the
fed.
Southern Command, the Defense
Ravil Mingazov
Surely, no one
Department and always the White House.
I was surprised by how hard it was to
enlists for this duty, the
gracefully get out of a long and crazy
responsibility of forcing a man to eat, to live.
conversation with the Southern Command’s
I eased out of the conversation by
Public Affairs Office in Florida. I spoke to a
explaining I prayed for the guards whenever
man whose cocky, cheerful voice belied a
I prayed for the detainees. We’d been on the
taste for argument.
phone for 20 minutes.
I explained that I used to teach human
His scorn, more than my fast, gave me a
rights.
sense of solidarity with the men in their
Wftere?
cells.
At a local college,
After the phone call, I looked up Ravil
What college?
Mingazov, the detainee to whom I’d sent my
Lewis & Clark.
I told him that we researched the cases of letter: He was a ballet dancer with the Red
Army Choir, for heaven’s sake, ordered
political prisoners around the world, worked
released on May 13, 2010, by Judge Henry
up files on them, and advocated for their
Kennedy of the U.S. District Court for the
release. These were countries such as
District of Columbia.
China, Iraq, Turkey, where prisoners were
My discouragement was complete.
tortured and not necessarily brought to trial.
It seems inconceivable that the United
States has adopted those very practices.
hen, at his April 30 press conference,
President Obama finally spoke:
“I’ve asked my team to review everything
that’s currently being done in Guantanamo,
everything that we can do administratively,
and I’m going to re-engage with Congress to
try to make the case that this is not
something that’s in the best interests of the
American people.... [T]he idea that we
would still maintain forever a group of
individuals who have not been tried — that
is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to
our interests, and it needs to stop.”
The demonstrations and fasts
orchestrated by Witness Against Torture,
and the advocacy and encouragement
practiced by Center for Constitutional
Rights had helped the hunger strikers hold
out, and the hunger strike had finally
accomplished something: It captured the
President’s attention. I don’t think he would
have recommitted to closing the prison
without the hunger strike. I was
flabbergasted.
In human rights work, we celebrate the
victories humbly, knowing we can never
claim them to be ours. Instead, they are the
result of hundreds, maybe thousands of
people all working at the same time, alone
and in the dark.
Now, nearly two-thirds of the 166
detainees are still on strike, and 40 new
medical staffers have been sent to
Guantanamo to “handle” the emergency.
The White House phone number is 202-
456-1111.
■
Guantanamo by the numbers
■ About 780 men have been brought to and held in
Guantanamo since January 2002. all of whom were
Muslim.
■ 604 men have been transferred from Guantanamo.
■ 166 men remain imprisoned at Guantanamo.
■ 92 percent of the men ever held in Guantanamo are
not “Al-Qaeda fighters," by the U.S. government’s own
records.
■ 86 men have been cleared for release from
Guantanamo but remain in detention, including 56 men
from Yemen.
■ 46 men are slated for indefinite detention without
charge or trial. The government claims they can neither
be released nor prosecuted.
■ 22 or more prisoners were younger than 18 when
captured.
■ 12 or more men fear torture or persecution in their
countries of nationality. These men will remain in
detention until other countries offer them safe haven and
a chance to rebuild their lives.
■ 10 years or more is the length of time most men have
been held at Guantanamo without charge or trial.
M
AFFORDABLE PLACE TO RENT?
■ 9 men have died in the prison, more than the number
convicted in military commissions.
■ 2 men have been forcibly transferred by the Obama
administration to Algeria, despite their credible fears of
abuse in Algeria.
■ 0 senior government officials have been held
accountable for the wrongful detention and torture at
Guantanamo.
Source: Center fo r Constitutional Rights
www.CCRjustice.org
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