France24 news
written by AFP staff
Thursday May 2, 2013
Force-feeding hunger strikers is a breach of international law, the UN's human rights office said Wednesday, as US authorities tried to stem a protest by inmates at the controversial Guantanamo Bay jail.
"If it's perceived as torture or inhuman treatment -- and it's the case, it's painful -- then it is prohibited by international law," Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, told AFP.
Out of 166 inmates held at the prison at the remote US naval base in southeastern Cuba, 100 are on hunger strike, according to the latest tally from military officers. And of those, 21 detainees are being fed through nasal tubes.
Coville explained that the UN bases its stance on that of the World Medical Association, a 102-nation body whose members include the United States, which is a watchdog for ethics in healthcare.
In 1991 the WMA said that forcible feeding is "never ethically acceptable".
"Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting," it said.
That WMA ruling followed a 1975 declaration that artificial feeding methods should never be used without a prisoner's permission, and that a prisoner had the right to refuse all food if a physician considered the individual capable of "unimpaired and rational judgment" about the consequences.
Artificial feeding can be used if a prisoner agrees to it, or if the detainee is ruled unable to make a competent decision and left no unpressured advance instructions refusing it, according to the WMA.
The hunger strike, which is now into its 12th week, has upped the pressure on Washington to shut what President Barack Obama has called a legal "no man's land".
On Tuesday, Obama vowed to renew a push to close the prison, saying he did not want any inmates to die and urging Congress to help him find a long-term solution that would allow for prosecuting terror suspects while shuttering Guantanamo.
The inmates are protesting their indefinite detention without charges or trials at the facility, which was set up by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to hold those captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
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Reuters news
written by Jane Sutton
Thursday March 1, 2012
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, - The U.S. admiral in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is defending the decision to build a $744,000 soccer field for well-behaved prisoners, and said critics misunderstood the facility's purpose and logistics.
Rear Admiral David Woods said the camp's mission was not to punish foreign captives unnecessarily, many of whom have been held there for 10 years already. He said his job is to detain them away from the battlefield under safe and humane conditions, and that providing socialization opportunities was part of that.
"It does include things that keep their mind active, like the classes that we keep and the entertainment, newspapers, books, TV that they're able to experience here," Woods told journalists visiting the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base on Wednesday night.
Military contractors Burns and Roe Services Corp and Dick Corp are building the new recreation yard to replace one that was popular among prisoners living at a communal camp that was shuttered two years ago due to chronic drainage problems, camp officials said.
The dusty, 28,000-square-foot soccer field includes a soft gravel walking track, security cameras and a high fence topped with razor wire. It is expected to open in the spring, after goal posts and latrines are added.
Woods said the cost of the recreation yard was high because every piece of equipment has to be imported by barge or plane to the remote base in southeast Cuba. The United States maintains an economic embargo against Cuba, its unwilling host, to pressure its communist government.
"That's probably the biggest misperception and lack of understanding of the expense of doing things down here," Woods said. "It's unlike any place else in the world mainly because we don't have the opportunity to capitalize on the local economy."
TALIBAN OR AL QAEDA LINKS
The Guantanamo detention camp holds 171 men, many with suspected links to the Taliban or al Qaeda. Only five have been convicted of crimes in military tribunals at the base and they are held separately from the general population.
The new recreation yard will be available to about 120 other detainees whose compliance with the rules has earned them a spot in "Camp 6," a communal prison building that offers art and language classes, group meals and expanded recreational opportunities. Woods said such amenities are a valuable incentive that have helped reduced attacks on the guards.
Journalists visiting the base for a tribunal hearing got a tour of the soccer field earlier in the week and the resultant publicity brought a storm of criticism.
A Florida congressman, Republican Gus Bilirakis, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday demanding to know who approved what he called a frivolous and wasteful expenditure at a time when the U.S. economic growth is tepid, military spending is being cut and U.S. troops are still fighting in Afghanistan.
"It is curious that the federal government has managed to spend nearly a million dollars for the comfort and relaxation of detainees who are accused of posing a real risk to our country and people," Bilirakis wrote.
Many of the prisoners were captured after the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to roust the al Qaeda group blamed for the hijacked plane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The military has been under pressure from rights monitors and its own inspectors to improve conditions for those facing indefinite detention. About half the prisoners have been cleared for release, but many are from Yemen but remain here because the United States has halted transfers to that unstable country. said.
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The Miami Herald
written by Carol Rosenberg
March 4, 2012
Some members of Congress are questioning the wisdom of the Pentagon’s spending $744,000 on a soccer field to keep captives busy outside a $39 million penitentiary-style building at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
A military contractor, BRDC (Burns and Roe Dick Corp. Services), is building the new recreation yard outside Camp 6, a six-year-old, 200-cell prison where about 120 of the most cooperative of Guantánamo’s 171 captives are kept.
Camp 6 already has two smaller yards so troops call the new recreation yard the “Super Rec.” Each cellblock is also equipped with large flat-screen televisions bolted to the rafters and exercise machines.
Also, military psychological staff members teach an optional 90-minute weekly session called “Enriching Your Life” to help captives manage their indefinite stays.
It’s “based on acceptance and commitment therapy,” said Air Force Maj. Michelle Coghill, a Guantánamo spokeswoman.
Detainees engage in “experiential exercises” that include “mindfulness breathing meditations,” story telling and lectures to manage depression or anxiety and “flexibly handle unhelpful thinking and intense emotions while engaging in value-driven, life-enriching behaviors.”
The U.S. military also said, for the first time, that Guantánamo staff had given watches to “a very small number” of Camp 6 captives.
Watches were taboo for years, although guards posted schedules for Islam’s five-times daily prayers in prison recreation yards.
In the earliest years of Guantánamo, the Pentagon presumed possession of a Casio wristwatch was a justification for indefinite detention as an “enemy combatant” because, the military said, a captured al Qaida manual showed how to configure a Casio as a timer for an explosive device.
Soccer has long been popular since the Pentagon permitted sports in its evolving 10-year effort to conform to the Geneva Conventions and reduce tensions between captives and a rotating guard force and detention center staff of 1,850 troops, agents and government contractors.
Four-term Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe, a former judge, ridiculed the new soccer field in a congressional floor speech on Thursday.
“These radicals should be doing hard time, not soccer time,” he said, conjuring up a future “terrorist soccer league.”
As an elected judge, Poe was known for his “Poetic Justice” punishments: Ordering released sex offenders to post warning signs on their homes and convicted murderers to post photos of their victims in their cells.
“Our government has no business building this tropical Caribbean recreation facility for terrorists,” Poe said. “What’s next at this terrorist playground? A Tiki hut and bar on the beach?”
Bilirakis visited the camps in January 2010 as part of a 14-member delegation, Guantánamo records show. In October 2010, he and Poe voted for legislation that prevented the Obama administration from using federal funds to transfer detainees from Guantánamo Bay to U.S. soil or to their home nations.
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