OpEdNews - Page 4 of Article: Guantanamo Under Obama

-- nearby detainees report that he bangs his head against his cell walls and smears them with his excrement;

-- during a recent attorney visit, he was too anxious to concentrate in spite of "his intense desire to challenge his detention;"

-- "in complete despair, he threatened to harm himself again;" the same is true for many others;

-- after cutting himself, Tumani was harshly disciplined; when he failed to clean up his excrement, a ten-guard IRF team severely beat him; sprayed him with tear gas or another noxious substance leaving his skin red and burning days later; and stripped his cell of everything, including a thin sleeping mat; instead of treating his psychotic state, prison personnel beat and punished him.

Hunger Strikes and Force-Feeding

As a result of continued mistreatment, torture, isolation, and deprivation, detainee hunger strikes are common as their only way to protest. The response is to restrain them in chairs, force tubes through their noses and throats abrasively enough to draw blood, and pump food into their stomachs - a procedure causing excruciating pain.

Strikes began as early as February 2002, involving as many as 200 or more prisoners at a time, and continuing on and off for months. Constant abuse sparks them or just an individual act.

Introduced in December 2005, "restraint chairs" are called "padded cell on wheels" because they confine legs, arms, shoulders, and head. A thickness of a finger tube is then forcibly inserted up the nose to the stomach for as much as 1.5 liters of formula, or more than a stomach can hold - causing severe pain, bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and shortness of breath.

No sedatives or anesthesia are given, and men are kept strapped in for an hour to prevent purging. The procedure is generally repeated twice daily with the same tubes, covered in blood and stomach bile, reportedly used from one inmate to another with no proper sanitation. "The policy of force-feeding with restraint chairs continues to this day under the Obama administration."

One inmate described the experience as "torture, torture, torture." Another refusing force-feeding was beaten so badly he was hospitalized on January 8, 2009 but failed to receive proper treatment for multiple injuries.

US Bureau of Prison regulations require that force-feeding be humane. The World Medical Association, of which the AMA is part, states that force-feeding violates medical ethics, and when accompanied by "threats, coercion, force, and the use of physical restraints is considered inhuman and degrading treatment." For inmates, it's excruciating torture.

Religious Abuses

They include humiliation, the invasion of privacy, forced nudity, preventing communal prayer, and allowing no Muslim chaplain.

Forced Separation of Family Members and Denial of Adequate Family Communications

Only recently has even "extraordinarily limited" familial telephone access been allowed. For the first six years there was none. Now at most one annual monitored call is permitted compared to Federal Bureau of Prisons regulations requiring at least one a month, and at the Florence, Colorado supermax facility, two a month is procedure. For prisoners under special disciplinary measures, it's one every 90 days.

In the few cases where two family members are detained together, total separation with no communication is enforced, "causing further trauma." In one such instance at Guantanamo, extreme pressure continues to be exerted on a son to provide "evidence" against his father.

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