The Iron Fist Closes

Dear Mr. President,
“The United States only detains individuals when that detention is lawful, and does not intend to hold any individual longer than necessary.” This whopper delivered by Michael Williams, senior adviser for Guantanamo policy, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. State Department, during this week’s hearing of the OAS’s Human Rights commission investigating conditions at Guantanamo. At the same hearing, lawyers for Guantanamo detainees tell a far different story: of the psychic trauma of indefinite detention without charges and of deteriorating conditions at the camp—personal possessions like family photos are now confiscated, Qur’ans desecrated, beatings by guards, a detainee shot in the neck, the first reported incident of gunfire in the camp’s history. A harsher, more punitive attitude has returned to Guantanamo with a recent change in command and prisoners have only one way to protest: refusing to eat. In spite of official statements that just 6 or 7 prisoners are participating, it’s clear there are more than 100 of the 166 prisoners on a 2-month-long hunger strike. Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni, has been on an uninterrupted hunger strike since February 2007. He is force-fed liquid supplements daily through his nose, a painful process the UN declared torture. Another inmate wrote his lawyer, “We are in danger…. Please do something.” He told of guards firing rubber bullets at inmates and threatening “to return us to the darkest days under Bush. They said this to us.” You found ways around Congress to wage drone wars, you found ways around the Constitution to murder American citizens without due process; surely, Mr. President, you could find ways to stop this. But you don’t. In December you signed the 2013 NDAA making it impossible to release prisoners from Guantanamo or move them to another facility. You could have vetoed that measure but you didn’t. In January you shut down the office tasked with finding new homes for cleared Guantanamo prisoners (about half of them), and reassigned the Special Envoy in charge, Dan Fried. How can we forget your 2008 campaign pledge to close Guantanamo? Or your betrayal of that promise. Guantanamo, indefinite detention, the power to declare anyone anywhere, a terrorist. Whistle-blowers like Bradley Manning now face the prospect of a death sentence. Suppress information, Suppress protest. Ignore laws and those who protest against injustice and violations of human rights. The iron fist closes. This is your legacy.

Image from Nation of Change http://www.nationofchange.org/starving-justice-guantanamo-1363270003