Guantanamo hunger strike

The first well known Guantanamo Bay hunger strikes began during the middle of 2005, when detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp initiated two hunger strikes. The detainees organized several widespread hunger strikes to protest their innocence, and the conditions of their confinement. Other captives, such as the men camp authorities asserted committed suicide in June 2006, had committed themselves to long-term hunger strikes, which were not shared by the other captives. Widespread hunger strikes recurred in 2013.

Hunger strikes began in 2002, when the camp first opened, but the secrecy with which the camp was operated prevented news of those strikes reaching the public.

According to historian Andy Worthington, the author of The Guantanamo Files, the weight of at least eighty captives dropped to below 100 pounds (45 kg) each.

Camp authorities responded by force-feeding captives, according to the camp's Standard Operating Procedures. They had started isolated cases of force-feeding, called "re-feeding", early in the camp's history. Human rights workers, and Physicians' professional associations, have criticized the use of force-feeding on mentally competent patients at Guantanamo.

The American Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman, Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico, said on July 21, 2005 that 50 detainees were involved in the hunger strike. The first hunger strike ended on July 28, 2005, when prison authorities agreed to bring the camp into compliance with the Geneva Conventions. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the strike had become so widespread that medics could not manage the needs and elected to stop making their regular medical calls. The prisoners spent 26 days without food.

According to human rights workers, the prison authorities had a waiver form they asked detainees to sign if they wanted to refuse intravenous rehydration. The detainees had all been advised, by their lawyers, not to sign anything which their lawyers had not reviewed.

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