Perhaps you’ve seen the video of Mos Def being force fed to simulate what happens to those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay who are undergoing the same procedure. If you haven’t, here it is in all it’s gory glory.
What’s significant about the video is the fact that many of those who are not eating are those who have been cleared for release, some of them many years earlier but who still languish in Gitmo Bay for unknown, unexplained reasons. One such person is Shaker Aamer
In a desperate message from Guantánamo, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, told one of his lawyers by phone, “The administration is getting ever more angry and doing everything they can to break our hunger strike. Honestly, I wish I was dead.”
Shaker, who was cleared for release from the prison under President Bush in 2007 and under President Obama in 2009, was speaking to Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, and his words were reported in the Observer, which also noted his claims that “the US authorities are systematically making the regime more hardline to try to defuse the strike, which now involves almost two-thirds of the detainees.”
If you want bios on those who have been cleared for release, you can read about them here. America is not proving itself to be a shining beacon of freedom and liberty with the continued imprisonment of innocent men; rather it is showing itself to be the opposite even under the guide and stewardship of the Nation’s first African-American president who campaigned on a theme of “Change”. Those in Gitmo Bay are still waiting for the change and their release.
Related articles
- Guards are sexually assaulting me, says the last Briton in Guantanamo Bay (independent.co.uk)
- PJ Harvey Records New Song For Shaker Aamer, Last Remaining British Resident in Gitmo (notthesingularity.com)
- Grandmother’s hunger strike for Guantanamo Bay’s Shaker Aamer (politicalcrazyness.tumblr.com)
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