Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Pardiss Kebriaei the American Senior Staff Attorney at the Center Constitutional Rights focusing on challenging government abuses post-9/11, including in the areas of “targeted killing“ and unjust detentions at Guantanamo has been interviewed by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now in reference to the Guantanamo prisoner hunger strike. In the interview Kebriaei states “…there is a large-scale hunger strike in Camp 6, which is the largest of the facilities at Guantánamo. That prison holds about 130 men. He said that almost everyone, except for a few who are sick and elderly, are on strike. He himself [her client Ghaleb Al-Bihani] had lost over 20 pounds. He is a diabetic. His blood glucose levels are fluctuating wildly. He told me that medical staff at Guantánamo have told him his life is in danger. And he and others want us to get the word out about this. We [at] CCR and group of other habeas counsel, wrote a letter to the authorities at Guantánamo and to the Department of Justice reporting what we have heard and asking for a response. And to date, almost two weeks later, we have not heard anything, other than denials of the strike.  …They have downplayed the scale of the strikes and have said that there are only a handful on strike and only a handful being tube-fed. It may be a matter of semantics: The way that Guantánamo authorities define people on  hunger strike is largely discretionary. But what we have heard from every habeas counsel who has been down to the base or communicated with their clients since February is the same, which is that there is a large-scale strike, men are refusing food. …you start seeing things like loss of vision, loss of hearing, and eventually death. So this is—it’s an emergency situation. We view it as an emergency situation. And denials by the authorities, at this point, of the strike are dangerous and irresponsible.”

Inspired by Amy Goodman & Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now ow.ly/jBcHz Image source CFR ow.ly/jBcGy

Katherine Gallagher the Irish Senior Staff Attorney at the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), focusing on holding US and foreign government officials, military and corporations accountable for serious human rights violations, has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Bahrain: Silencing the voice of the voiceless’. Gallagher states “Bahrain is a small country, often forgotten unless the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy, which it hosts, is in the news. A country where people continue to fight for democracy despite the high, sometimes deadly, price of speaking out. A country which, for the past two years, has been living to the beat of police crack-downs, arbitrary detentions and tear gas shootings. …scores of Bahrainis are languishing in prison simply for having marched in the street to call for economic, social and political reforms. Human rights defenders have become a major target of the regime, with one leading human rights defender after another being arrested for documenting the ongoing abuses. It seems that in today’s Bahrain, the surest way to prison is human rights work. …Impunity remains the backdrop for these state-sponsored human rights violations. As of now, very few sentences have been rendered by courts for security officers accused of severe human rights violations and those convicted are low-ranking officers. Moreover, torture accusations by those unlawfully detained continue to be dismissed by the judicial system. …The international community and Bahrain’s main partners – particularly the United Kingdom and the United States, which, contrary to its own rhetoric on respecting human rights, continue to provide military aid to Bahrain – must ensure that Bahrain allows its citizens to enjoy their full rights without fearing dire consequences. …Only when all Bahrainis are allowed to exercise the full spectrum of rights, and human rights defenders allowed to do their important work, will the situation in Bahrain improve. “

Inspired by Katherine Gallagher, AlJazeera ow.ly/i3fGA Image source Twitter ow.ly/i3g0w