Increased Number of Hunger Strikers at Guantánamo

Periodico26
Sep. 18, 2005

Washington, September 17 (RHC)-- The number of hunger strikers at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo has increased, as 11 more detainees have now joined the protest action. The strike began over one month ago and currently involves 131 detainees, according to Major Jeff Weir, a spokesman of the prison camp.

Twenty-one protesters were hospitalized at the prison's clinic due to their deteriorated health and, according to the spokesman, 20 of them are being administered saline solutions.
The prisoners are protesting their indefinite detention, noting that many of them have been held for more than three years without any charges being filed against them. Some have even threatened to starve to death if they are not released or brought to trial.

According to officials at the naval base, located in eastern Cuba and illegally occupied by the United States, the strike began last August 8th by 76 detainees, but in the course of one month, the number of strikers has increased and now involves over one-fourth of the nearly 500 detainees there. However, human rights groups place the actual number of strikers at 210 -- nearly one hundred more than the official U.S. figures.

Human rights organizations have long denounced what they call a "legal limbo" for detainees at the Guantánamo Naval Base prison, without even being given the right to a lawyer.

The strikers want to call public attention to their precarious conditions at Guantánamo, as well as constant torture and humiliations they are subjected to by U.S. soldiers.