NOVANEWS
My name is Andres Thomas Conteris and I have been fasting since July 8 this year. I began with 30 000 prisoners from California. They started probably the most historic hunger strike of this country, though it was not reported in the news. When have we ever heard that 30 000 prisoners began a hunger strike? That was July 8, that was the beginning of Ramadan. And I began with them because they in California are living torture on a daily basis in ways that are expressed through indefinite detention in the SHUs of Pelican Bay and other prisons. The SHUs – the Security Housing Unit – is a solitary confinement and they are put in there, and they never know when they get out, just like in Guantanamo.
They put these prisoners in Guantanamo, they tell them 84 are cleared for release and they are not allowed to be released, and they are not told when they will be released. That is torture! Another way the torture is expressed in California and in Guantanamo is what is called extended solitary confinement. The special rapporteur on torture of the UN has said very clearly (his name is Juan Mendez from Argentina) – if someone is held in solitary longer than two weeks, it affects them, their entire life and that constitutes torture.
We just experienced something in this country. A film that is called Herman’s House, it was broadcasted on PBS’POV and I encourage everybody to watch it. It is about the prisoner who was the longest in a solitary confinement in this country. And he was allowed to be freed because he was dying of liver cancer. However, that’s not why he was freed. He was freed because the judge realized that his trial from over 40 years ago was illegal and he found the way to free him. He was freed for three days and in those three days the state of Louisiana wanted to put him in jail again. He was in solitary confinement for 42 years.
This is criminal! It is abominable! It is absolutely something we should repudiate with the strongest terms. And it is torture that happens in this country. It is torture that happens in the SHUs of Pelican Bay, of Corcoran and many other prisons of California and in every single state of this country torture happens with extended solitary confinement.
We are here today to focus on the third kind of torture. And that is force-feeding. Force-feeding is being done to prevent prisoners who would rather die in Guantanamo than to live in the limbo not knowing when they will be free, but also the constant psychological and physical torture that they are living every single day. They prefer to die. And this includes many of those who have been already cleared for release.
In other words, all the security agencies of this empire of the US have said that they are innocent. Homeland Security, the FBI – all of them have said they can be cleared for release, they are not a danger, they are not terrorists and yet they do not free them. Why politics and the Commander in Chief of this country – President Obama – do not have the political will to carry forward with his promise that he made to shutdown Guantanamo with the executive order that he’d sign on the first day that he was in the White House.
What is happening in terms of force-feeding is this – these prisoners are willing to give their lives and to stop eating. They are willing to die. But more than to die they want to live and they want to live as free men. And we are here in solidarity with them. And they have chosen what Gandhi has called the “prayer of the soul in anguish”, which is fasting. And they are willing to fast onto death. But they are not even given the right to die, which is yet another violation of their rights. And so, they are willing to die and they are not, and they have been fasting now for 253 days. I began my fast exactly 150 days after them. This is day 103 for me.
I have never experienced more pain in my life. When tube is gone in, at times it has blocked my capacity to breath. It is felt like constant agony and it is fire in your throat. It is a burning sensation. And every time you try to speak, if the tube is put very near the vocal cords, which sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, every word you speak is agony. And every time you swallow it is absolutely excruciating.
And so, when this happened to me the first time I thought – if this is really horrible, I will not be able to continue it. And it was more than horrible. It was the worst pain I’d ever experienced. And so, I thought there is no way I’m continuing. And then I thought of them who are tortured two times a day in this very way. And so, I cannot stop. I have gone in from of the White House, I’ve gone in front of the CDCR in California – the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation – because in California they are torturing as well. And in the last two occasions I went in front of the US Embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay and in front of the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
And in those places and in future embassies to come and in future military bases to come and wherever I’m invited by human rights organizations I will go and we will have feeding actions. Why? Because we need to reveal to the light of day what is the torture that is happening in the shadows. And if we took these cameras, if we took these microphones into the feeding-torture-chambers and the public could see on a regular basis what the feedings are like, like they will see with me today… and I want to stress this. I will not be tortured today! I’m giving my consent, I’m agreeing to have nasal intubation to fed through nasogastric tubes. I’m consenting to that and because I’m consenting this is not torture, but it is horribly painful.
They are tortured because they do not give their consent. And without giving consent I would call this, if it were a sexual kind of analogy it would be rape. And am I calling the Pentagon rapists? No! I’m calling them serial rapists. They are constantly, premeditatedly inserting plastic into their orifices in a forced and relentless way and they are being raped daily. And we – the US tax payers – are paying for it. This must stop! I’m willing to give all that I can to show the world that this horrific torture continues in the name of US citizens. And it is carried out by the perpetrating Pentagon officials. And it is ordered by the President of the US because he will not give the order to stop force-feeding. And that is a very simple order. He does not need Congress to tell him to stop force-feeding. He can give that order and he can stop the torture today. And I’m calling on you President Obama, if you could hear my voice.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_10_19/Force-feeding-is-constant-psychological-and-physical-torture-that-Guantanamo-prisoners-are-living-every-day-activist-9100/
