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A Difficult Year's End

By Nestor Nunez
AIN Special Service

January 5, 2006

The prisoners at the illegally occupied US Naval Base in Guantanamo did not have a good New Year's Eve. On a hunger strike remain almost 90 of the 500 to 700 so-called "enemy combatants" detained since the beginning of the war against Afghanistan.

This is part of a movement that was triggered last August and which included 76 of the detainees accused of terrorist activities.

Of course Washington does not want scandals such as this which draw world attention to charges of torture and mistreatment inflicted against these people from all around our planet.

According to allegations made public at Guantanamo -as well as at other well-known and less well-known prisons where so-called "enemy combatants" have been transferred- they are beaten on a daily basis, sexually humiliated and their religious beliefs disrespected.

It has been made public, the Koran -the sacred book of Islamic- was desecrated by the military guards at Guantanamo as a technique in humiliating prisoners.

In addition, prisoners are denied all juridical rights, placing them in an eternal legal limbo simple because George W. Bush and his team wish it that way.

Such aberrant policy has been met with the unavoidable response of the victims, turning to successive and endless hunger strikes.

The US authorities have been obligated to force feed the prisoners, making this another method of torture; but those authorities have not been able to bend the will of those who demand their rights and justice.

The atmosphere created around the conditions in which the Guantanamo prisoners live -as well as other prisoners seized from day one in Washington's so called anti-terrorist crusade- corrodes the White House image as a defender of human rights.

The US press itself has commented that "men and children are prisoners in conditions that would be characterized as cruel if one were to treat a dog or cat that way." This is the situation in which hundreds and maybe thousands of people live under the iron hands of those who proclaim themselves defenders of freedom.

In any case, the truth had been said and re-said. It will be very difficult for the torturers to regain the slightest bit of credibility.

 

 

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