2013 hunger strike in Guantanamo

On February 6, 2013 Guantanamo captives commenced a widespread hunger strike. By its 100th day 100 of the remaining 166 captives were on hunger striking, according to the Department of Defense's definition of what constituted a hunger strike. 30 of those captives were being forced to injest liquid nourishment through a tube stuck into their nose and down their throat to the their stomaches. Camp authorities had confined all captives to their cells, putting all captives essentially in solitary confinement

An open letter to my military doctor

On May 30, 2013, an open letter to their doctors was made public:

An open letter to my military doctor: allow independent medical access Dear Doctor, I do not wish to die, but I am prepared to run the risk that I may end up doing so, because I am protesting the fact that I have been locked up for more than a decade, without a trial, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and denied access to justice. I have no other way to get my message across. You know the authorities have taken everything from me. For this reason, I am respectfully requesting that independent medical professionals be allowed into Guantánamo to treat me, and that they be given full access to my medical records, in order to determine the best treatment for me. You claim to be acting according to your duties as a physician to save my life. This is against my expressed wish. As you should know, I am competent to make my own decisions about medical treatment. When I try to refuse the treatments you offer, you force them upon me, sometimes violently. For those reasons, you are in violation of the ethics of your profession, as the American Medical Association and World Medical Association have made clear. My decision to go on hunger strike and to endure semi-starvation for over 100 days was not entered into lightly. I am doing it because it is literally the only method I have to make the outside world pay attention. Your response to my carefully considered decision cannot logically lead to the conclusion that your only goal is to save my life — your actions over recent months do not support such an inference. For those of us being force-fed against our will, the process of having a tube repeatedly forced up our noses and down our throats in order to keep us in a state of semi-starvation is extremely painful and the conditions under which it is done are abusive. If you truly had my best medical interests at heart, you could have talked to me like a human being about my choices, instead of treating me in a way that feels like I am being punished for something. You must know that your professional overreaction to my participation in the hunger strike has been condemned by no lesser an authority than the United Nations; the Special Rapporteur on Health has stated unequivocally that “health care personnel may not apply undue pressure of any sort on individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike, nor is it acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike.” In any regard, I cannot trust your advice, because you are responsible to your superior military officers who require you to treat me by means unacceptable to me, and you put your duty to them above your duty to me as a doctor. Your dual loyalties make trusting you impossible. For these reasons, our present doctor-patient relationship cannot contribute to resolving the threats to my health that this hunger strike is engendering. You may be able to keep me alive for a long time in a permanently debilitated state. But with so many of us on hunger strike, you are attempting a treatment experiment on an unprecedented scale. And you cannot be certain that human error will not creep in and result in one or more of us dying. Your superiors, up to and including President Obama, their Commander-in-Chief, recognize that my death or that of another hunger striker here would have serious undesirable consequences. You have been ordered to guarantee — with absolute certainty — my survival, but it is beyond your (or perhaps any doctor’s) ability to do that. I have some sympathy for your impossible position. Whether you continue in the military or return to civilian practice, you will have to live with what you have done and not done here at Guantánamo for the rest of your life. Going forward, you can make a difference. You can choose to stop actively contributing to the abusive conditions I am currently enduring. I am asking you only to raise with your superiors my urgent request that I be allowed access to examination by and independent medical advice from a doctor or doctors chosen by my lawyers, in confidence, and that those doctors to be supplied with my full medical notes in advance of their visit. This is the least you can do to uphold the minimum of your oath to “do no harm.” Yours sincerely, The Detainees on Hunger Strike at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base Shaker Aamer ISN 239 Ahmed Belbacha ISN 290 Younus Chekhouri ISN 197 Abu Wa’el Dhiab ISN 722 Mohammed Ghanem ISN 44 Nabil Hadjarab ISN 238 Adel al-Hakeemy ISN 168 Mohammed Hidar ISN 498 Sanad al-Kazimi ISN 1453 Samir Moqbel ISN 43 Abdullatif Nasser ISN 244 Mohammed Nabi Omari ISN 832 Abdul Haq Wasiq Afghanistan, ISN 4

Known hunger strikers

On May 13. 2013, the Miami Herald published a list of captives whose lawyers had told been told they were hunger striking, who had then made that knowledge public. It included:

portrait	isn	name	notes
	ISN 027	Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman	His habeas corpus appeal was decided in his favour on February 24, 2010, but the Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the release order on March 29, 2011.
	ISN 043	Samir Naji Al Hasan Moqbel	Published a widely cited op-ed in the New York Times describing the experience of being force-fed.p
	ISN x	Moath al Alwi	Shot in the chest with rubber bullet on April 13, 2013.
	ISN x	Tariq Ba Awdah	His hunger striek dates back to February 2007.
	ISN 290	Ahmed Belbacha	The Obama administration cleard him for release in 2012 or earlier.
	ISN x	Nabil Hadjarab	The Obama administration cleard him for release in 2012 or earlier.
	ISN x	Jihad Diyab	The Obama administration cleard him for release in 2012 or earlier.
	ISN x	Mohammed al-Hamiri	The Obama administration cleard him for release in 2012 or earlier.
	ISN x	Mohammed Hidar	Status unknown.
	ISN x	Yasin Ismael	Status unknown.
	ISN x	Fayez al Kandari	Once faced charges before a Guantanamo Military Commission.
	ISN x	Abdul Rahman Shalabi	Started being tube-fed in 2005.