Moath al-Alwi is a Yemeni national who has been in US custody
since 2002. He was one of the very first prisoners moved to Guantanamo,
where the US
military assigned him the Internment Serial Number 028.
++++++++++++++++++++++
March 10, 2014 - I write this letter, as I wrote my last,
between bouts of violent vomiting and sharp pains in my stomach caused by this
morning's force-feeding session. Reading news articles, you would think that we
have stopped striking. Perhaps you might think that our protests had even been
sated by government concessions. We may be trapped behind the walls of Guantanamo, but we will not
be silenced.
I write this letter to tell you that we are still striking.
We will not stop until we get our dignity back in this place and are allowed to
return home to our families.
With President Barack Obama's blessing, Colonel Bogdan, the
warden at Guantanamo,
has instituted humiliating groin searches, especially when we are taken for
phone calls with our lawyers or families. He has withheld our medical treatment
and confiscated our legal papers and Qurans.
The Colonel has been quoted as saying that he knows how to
discipline us because he has children at home. We are not his children and this
is certainly not our home. We are grown men with families who no longer know
what we look like.
Here, a peaceful hunger strike automatically places the
prisoner on "disciplinary status", which involves being subjected to
various forms of punishment. To discourage striking, the prisoner is moved from
communal living to solitary confinement and is force-fed.
Because I decided to peacefully protest my imprisonment
here, the special mattress and medical pillows prescribed for my chronic
back pain, all of my underwear, my electric razor, and even my bar of soap and
toothbrush have been confiscated.
I, too, am strapped down and force-fed for over an hour
every single day. During the session, I am constantly vomiting the feeding
solution into my lap. As I am carried back to my cell, I cannot help but vomit
on the guards carrying me.
They put a Plexiglas face mask on my head to protect their
clothes from my vomit. They tighten the facemask and press down on it, pushing
it into my face. I almost suffocate because I am vomiting inside the facemask
and am unable to breathe.
As I struggle for air, the guards make fun of me, laughing
loudly. Frequently, they lie me down on my stomach in my cell and press my back
forcefully, squeezing out any remaining feeding solution from the previous
force-feeding session. The lightest of the guards weighs at least 190 lbs,
while I weigh only 98 lbs; it is a wonder they do not break me entirely.
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