Few Americans know the truth about the atrocities that have occurred at the U.S. internment camps at Guantanamo Bay. What we do know — per the Justice Department — is 86 innocent men have been cleared of any wrongdoing, and yet they remain unlawfully detained. Eighty other men have never been charged with a crime or given a trial. They have all been held captive — away from their families and homes for more than a decade.
More than 70 days ago, U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo desecrated several detainees’ Qur’ans, said Jamadi Al-Thani of Al-Arabiya news. That event triggered a dozen of the detainees to go on hunger strikes, which generated a domino effect where dozens more began starving themselves. Now nearly every detainee is on hunger strike, and they are committed to leaving either by death or release, said Guantanamo detainee attorney David Remes.
Attorney for the Center of Constitutional Rights Pardiss Kabriaei stated is it likely at least some of the detainees will die. If, and when, they do die, it will be a result of possible U.S. war crimes. There were more than 200 FBI reports of CIA abuse, in fact.
The United Nations is concerned. UN investigator Ben Emmerson is demanding access to secret documents that will expose torture and human rights abuses of POWs captured and imprisoned by the CIA. Anyone associated with this heinous behavior should be held accountable at the International Criminal Court and punished accordingly.
After the ACLU disclosure that at least 92 percent of Guantanamo captives had no connection to terror and the CIA had no evidence to prove malfeasance, the American people began to pay attention. Since then, hundreds of thousands of amazing people have been working together for human rights for all people suffering under the heavy hands of U.S. war criminals like the CIA.
When news of the hunger strike hit, activists coordinated joint emergency demonstrations across the United States to bring awareness to the Guantanamo crisis. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International are demanding that President Barack Obama direct Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to do what needs to be done to shut down the Guantanamo facility just as the president promised to do as a candidate in 2007.
On April 11, large rallies dotted the American landscape. The coalition, titled “Day of Action to Close Guantanamo & End Indefinite Detention,” pulled people out into the streets from New York to San Francisco.
But hope is running out for detainees now starving themselves for more than two months. Cori Crider, attorney for detainee Samier Mokbel, announced last week that her client and 10 others are now being force-fed by internment staff. Video news from Al-Arabiya also shows American soldiers preparing feeding tubes. U.S. corporate news agencies are only now starting to cover the hunger strike, but still only in vague details.
The Guantanamo prison facility was established in January 2002 and has since played off and hyped up American fear. It was a means to promote the unjustified Iraq invasion. So innocent men from North Africa to Afghanistan were gathered up by CIA henchmen, labeled terrorists and banished to Gitmo — with American citizens none the wiser.
Many Americans blindly believed the stories they were told about countries they knew nothing about, from spies who make their profession out of lying.
It will be interesting to see if the Department of Defense does shut down the internment camp at Guantanamo once the detainees are gone — as it should. Hopefully we do not find ourselves in the precarious position of keeping it open to facilitate unwarranted war with Iran.