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Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strike
The Minnesota Daily
Starving for justice down in Guantanamo
September 19, 2005
About a quarter of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are engaged in a hunger
strike, and 18 prisoners are being force-fed through tubes or intravenously
after about a month of not eating. The prisoners are protesting the frightening
reality that detainees have gone three years without trials.
A previous hunger strike was in response to Quran abuses and harshness of
some guards. Stories were leaked, and with the Pentagon's pushing
secretive policies, who knows what else has happened? Unfortunately, few
sympathize with the detainees because they simply do not know about them. That
aside, these detainees need a trial or some judicial process.
While morality and ethics are abstract ideas, justice is more concrete,
hence why there are laws. Guantanamo and the actions that have been taken by
our government against the detainees violate the Geneva convention, the Bill of
Rights, and our Constitution. Justice is not merely a conditional idea.
According to the U.S. government, justice is conditional since detainees do
not enjoy the same rights that U.S. citizens enjoy. Without a doubt, policies
in Guantanamo are wrong, both constitutionally and in a universal sense because
of international law violations.
With time, administrations shift, but certain principles should always be
constant. Citizens are the guardians of these principles, but if rights become
a token for some and not all, pretty soon they will belong to none. Refraining
from food in order to draw attention to a cause is something that has been done
before. Mohandas Ghandi took part in hunger strikes in order to protest the
forms of oppressive government that India faced, whether from the British or
the elite in India. Those on hunger strike in Guantanamo are also doing it for
access to some process of justice.
The current hunger strike should imbue a sense of urgency in being critical
of human rights
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