Graffiti depicts a Guantanamo prisoner.
Photo Credit: Walt Jabsco/Flickr
April 15, 2013 |
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel has never been charged with a crime, yet
he has languished in Guantanamo Bay for over 11 years. Now, he’s on
hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention and how military
guards have searched the Qu’rans of the Muslim prisoners locked up
there. He says he will not eat “until they restore my dignity.”
Moqbel’s
story was published today in theNew York Times,
and is based on a telephone call he had with his British lawyers from
the organization Reprieve. It is a harrowing account of the current
conditions at Guantanamo as a mass hunger strike continues. Over the
weekend,
reports emerged
that clashes had broken out between military guards and prisoners at
the camp over the decision to close a communal camp in Guantanamo and
isolate prisoners in individual cells. One detainee was reportedly
injured by a rubber bullet.
Moqbel, the 35-year-old
hunger-striking prisoner, isn’t sure how much weight he’s lost. But he’s
sure of other things: that he’s been vomiting blood; that he’s been
brutalized by what’s known as a Extreme Reaction Force; and that being
force-fed is extremely painful.
“I will never forget the
first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe
how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made
me feel like throwing up,” Moqbel writes. “I wanted to vomit, but I
couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never
experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment
upon anyone.”
Moqbel also relays the story of one
specific instance where he was force-fed: “During one force-feeding the
nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more
than usual, because she was doing things so hastily...It was so painful
that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding
me. As they were finishing, some of the ‘food’ spilled on my clothes. I
asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to
hold on to this last shred of my dignity.”
Moqbel is a
Yemeni prisoner who insists he’s done nothing wrong. He was picked up in
Pakistan, put on a plane and then sent to Gitmo after he asked to see
someone from the Yemeni Embassy. “The only reason I am still here is
that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This
makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be
treated like one,” he writes.
Moqbel makes clear that a
potential consequence of the hunger-strike is death. “I do not want to
die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something,
that is what I risk every day...here is no end in sight to our
imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the
choice we have made.
I just hope that because of the
pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to
Guantánamo before it is too late."
Human rights groups have decried the practice of force-feeding prisoners like Moqbel. As the
Empywheel blog notes,
Physicians for Human Rights has come out against the practice. "If
someone who is mentally competent expresses the wish not to be fed or
hydrated, medical personnel are ethically obligated to accede to that
person’s wishes," an expert with the
group toldMcClatchy.
"Under those circumstances, to go ahead and force-feed a person is not
only an ethical violation but may rise to the level of torture or
ill-treatment."
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