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Most of the 130 terror suspects imprisoned in Camp 6 ofGuantanamo Bay may be involved in a hunger strike that started in early March. The protestallegedly started after prison administrators confiscated inmates’personal belongings, including Korans – the overwhelming majorityof Guantanamo detainees are devout Muslims from the MiddleEast.RT: If the abuse the inmates are describing is true,surely there must have been a reason? Perhaps repeatedtransgressions? What do you think?Sara Flounders: Certainly, it is not a valid theory. Thetreatment in Guantanamo from the very first moment that theprisoners were kidnapped from the other side of the world andbrought to Guantanamo has been horrendous.  And it is theorganizations such as the Center for Constitutional Rights who havefought for the most elementary rights for these prisoners. Andtheir hunger strikes are the only way of even making themselvesheard over years and years without any hope of release, without anyreal charges.It was a Center for Constitutional Rights study that took thegovernment figures to confirm that 92 percent of all the prisonersheld in Guantanamo really had no connection at all to Al-Qaeda.They were sort of bought and sold and brought to Guantanamo as partof the US war on terror, justified as part of that war and with noreal standing.And they are really just part of the thousands of prisoners heldaround the world in US secret prisons or in prison ships, secretbases. It is an enormous problem and they are also a part of thehundreds of Muslim prisoners in the US, who have been held, whohave been framed on charges, who are held in solitary confinementand special management units.RT: Why is it only Guantanamo that is talked aboutwhen this comes out?SF: The US’s own publicity, that somehow this US base butoff the US mainland gave them complete control and out of the handsof US courts. So its very existence was a challenge and this iswhere they claimed they were bringing high profile prisoners. Butas I say 92 percent of them, I don’t know what kind of a failurerate is that, for those with no charges, and even those with whomthey made specific charges, they’ve used all manners of torture, ofwaterboarding, of isolation and so on again and again. This reallyis really in every aspect a crime.RT: Is it that nobody there deserves to bethere?SF: The real question is US treatment. No one in theworld deserves this form of US treatment which has becomeabsolutely routine and systematic. That is the use of torture, theuse of isolation, humiliation, degradation, religious insult – allof this.RT: So why is it allowed to continue? I’m sure a lotof the American public know about it, don’t they?SF: Well, it is allowed to continue, despite everypromise, including promises by the Obama administration that thefirst thing he would do, and this was four years ago, was to shutdown Guantanamo and of course he did not, because there is a big,big interest at stake in this lie, that has now been extended intothe NDAA and an attack on the rights of everyone in the US andpeople around the world. It extended those who a decade ago werekidnapped and put into prisons.Today they simply fire a drone at them and assassinate wholevillages. So this is a big extension on attacks on everyone’srights, dignity. And it is important that these prisoners areresisting with the only measure, the only thing that they can do isto not eat food in order to attract attention to the grievousconditions and the insults that they are routinelygiven.  RT: But where is it going to get them? This is nottheir first hunger strike.SF: Prisoners around the world, and this is true in thePalestinian struggle, the Irish struggle, the struggle in SouthAfrica and hear in the US know, that a hunger strike, at leastmaybe a way of reclaiming dignity, of showing resistance in theface of overwhelming power and that is why, I think, theseprisoners have chosen the same tactic. What else? They have noother weapon but their own body.RT: Do you agree with the argument that advocates theexistence of Guantanamo and that it saves American lives?SF: No. It is a complete fraud. Because any of theinformation gained through torture and isolation- what kind ofinformation is that? These people are held for years and years. Andit is an outrage. Guantanamo should be shut down, absolutely, andthe thousands held in secret prisons released – there has to be anaccount for that.RT: When do you think it is going to close?SF: It has to close. And I think the work a number ofcourageous and determined lawyers have done has been exemplary inchallenging this policy, but it also needs to be a much largerchallenge, here in the US and around the world, demanding an end tothese policies of torture. … Read More