Hear Guantanamo Horror Stories as Mass Hunger Strike Continues

From AlterNet:

Some are waiting to stand trial for war crimes. Others - more than half - have been cleared by the US government to be returned to their homelands or other countries. All watch the days, weeks, months and years slip by without resolution, regardless of status.

Al-Hela, who has been detained without charge or trial for nearly a decade, and has been stamped and unstamped with the label of al-Qaeda operative over the years, has not eaten since February 6.

He is gaunt and weak like dozens of other Guantanamo detainees who are participating in a protracted hunger strike that is approaching three months. Al-Hela, who walks with the aid of an aluminum cane, has lost more than 30 pounds in the past 10 weeks.

This is not the first time prisoners have refused sustenance to protest conditions at Gitmo, but it is the longest and most pervasive, according to human rights lawyers like Remes, who have sounded the alarm as their clients visibly deteriorated - mentally and physically - with each visit.

And

While the inspection of the Korans may have been the catalyst behind this most recent hunger strike, the driving force that sustains it is despair over more than a decade of indefinite detention and no hope of ever being released.

More here.

You know, even if every word spoken by these prisoners is a total lie, this hunger strike is extraordinarily shameful for the United States.  Only the desperate, only the totally oppressed, only those who have given up on life resort to this tactic.  These men have been incarcerated for over a decade now.  Many of them without even being charged with a crime.  Many who have been charged but have waited forever to stand trial.  And there are even some who have already been cleared, but aren't being allowed to go home, for reasons unknown.  They wait, and they wait, and they wait, and they wait, with no end in sight.  This makes me sick to my stomach.  It makes me ashamed to be an American.

Needless to say, those who have been cleared of any wrongdoing must be sent home immediately.  Those who have been charged with a crime need to be given a trial immediately.  And those who have not been charged, but have not been cleared, either, need to be charged or released.  Immediately.  Ten years is more than enough time.  This is a sick horrific joke.  It is not the American way.  It taints our nation with the stench of evil.  And, liberals, guess what?  We can no longer blame this on Bush.  Liberal savior Obama has been presiding over this atrocity for four years.  It's his now.  Which means it's ours, too.

We are all terrible people to allow this to continue.

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