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The U.S. military reported a major surge since Christmas Day in the number of Guantanamo Bay prisoners taking part in a nearly 5-month-old hunger strike, with 84 currently refusing food. The detainees launched their strike in early August after the military reneged on promises to provide gourmet mustard. “They are trying to foist off run-of-the-mill yellow mustard as the best they can offer,” said Mohammed Kamilhind, spokesman for the strikers. “The Geneva Conventions, according to lawyers we consulted, require that detainees be granted their choice of condiments.” “We are willing to die for our principles,” said Kamilhind. “Yellow mustard may...

The United States is denying allegations that its methods of force-feeding hunger strikers at the Guantamano Bay military base constitute torture. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says visiting lawyers have made well-substantiated allegations of cruelty. It is alleged prison guards, rather than doctors, have been inserting tubes into prisoners' noses and forcing them down into their stomachs, causing vomiting and bleeding. A spokesman for the Pentagon, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka, has denied this is happening. "They suppose that these people are being left bleeding - I know of no instance of that," he said. "There's been...

Nov. 16, 2005 - A Guantanamo detainee who has engaged in a three-month hunger strike to protest his treatment is so “severely malnourished” that he may be “in significant danger of dying,” according to an outside doctor who has reviewed the prisoner’s recent medical records. The prospect that a Guantanamo detainee may starve himself to death—and potentially provoke an international outcry—has raised concerns among some Defense Department officials as they wrestle with how to contain an inmate protest that has proven more intractable than they anticipated. But last Friday, a federal judge—after hearing testimony from a Guantanamo physician identified in...

Australians are taking part in an international day of fasting in support of detainees being held in the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison. The New York-based Constitutional Rights Centre, which initiated the action, says it is in support of what it estimates to be 250 prisoners on a hunger strike within the prison in Cuba.

WASHINGTON - Lawyers for hunger-striking terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba must be notified before any of their clients are fed against their will, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The government also must provide the lawyers of force-fed detainees with their clients' medical records dating to one week before the start of involuntary feeding. In a victory for the government, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler denied the lawyers' request for the detainees to be in contact by telephone with their lawyers, relatives and friends. At an Oct. 14 hearing before Kessler, Justice Department lawyer Terry Henry argued...

The Moroccan Ministry of Justice said Thursday that the hunger strike staged by prisoners involved in Laayoune events, has “a political character and is motivated by foreign parties,” reported MAP news agency. The Ministry insisted that the prisoners, who took part in the riots which occurred last May in Laayoune, “enjoy all their rights and benefit from medical follow-up.' “There is no link between the hunger strike and their detention conditions,” added the Ministry.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Prisoners on hunger strike at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay say troops force-fed them with dirty feeding tubes that have been violently inserted and withdrawn as punishment, according to declassified notes released Wednesday by defense attorneys. The repeated removal and insertion of the tubes has caused striking prisoners to vomit blood and to experience intense pain that they have equated with torture, the lawyers reported to a federal judge after visiting their clients at the U.S. base in eastern Cuba. Prisoners said they were taunted by troops who said the treatment was intended to...

Conditions at the prison at Guantánamo are inhumane. Inmates are deprived their right to religious worship, receive scant nutrition and suffer constant verbal and physical abuse from guards. It's a humanitarian outrage. I refer, of course, to Castro's Guantánamo Provincial Prison in Cuba proper, the prison across the fence from the U.S. naval base compound holding the terrorists. Fidel's lock-up makes the U.S. prison look like a five-star tropical resort. Torture, deprivation and isolation of political prisoners at the "other" Guantánamo -- or at any of Fidel's gulags across the island -- are no secret. They've been loudly denounced by...

LONDON - The military is tube-feeding more than a dozen of the 89 terror suspects on hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday. Some of the 89 striking detainees at Guantanamo have not eaten for a month, Maj. Jeff Weir, a spokesman for Guantanamo's detention mission, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio and television. Previously, the military has said that 76 inmates were participating in the hunger strike. Weir said most of the strikers were in good health, but medics were treating 15 and 13 of those were being fed through tubes. "We...

Maybe these inmates just need some good music to help them dine on their turkey meals. What if the El Paso County Sheriff piped in this little ditty by comedian Adam Sandler during mealtime? Surely this would put the inmates in the mood for some turkey...heh, heh, heh! "The Thanksgiving Song" "They wanna hear the thanksgiving song! All right.." "This is uhh, This is the Thanksgiving Song" "I hope you enjoy it." [Starts playing] Love to eat turkey Love to eat turkey Shout from Crowd: "I love you Adam!" Adam Sandler: "Ohhh, I love you!" Love to eat turkey 'Cause...

Thousands Hold Candle Vigil for Ganji July 31, 2005 Potkin Azarmehr /Iran va Jahan More than a thousand Iranians gathered outside Akbar Ganji's house in Tehran to mark 50 days of his hunger strike. The Iranian dissident is continuing his hunger strike and is demanding his freedom and the end of the dictatorial rule of the "supreme leader". The participants lit candles, recited poetry, prayed and sang patriotic anthems. Iran's prominent dissidents and poets took part in the event. Present in the vigil were Abbas Amir-Entezam, Mohammad Maleki, Simin Behbahani, Ali-Ashraf Darvishian, Fatimeh Haghighatjoo and many other well-known Iranian public...

Writer, Lawyer Dr. Nasser Zarafshan on the Verge of Death in Prison Prominent Iranian writer and lawyer Nasser Zarafshan who has been on a hunger strike for the past week in Iran’s infamous Evin Prison in Tehran is ill and at the brink of death. Zarafshan who has been in prison for close to four years has vowed to continue his hunger strike until his released despite his kidney stones. On June 18, over 120 International writers from the 71 Congress of International PEN held in Bled Slovenia signed a statement demanding the immediate release of Zarafshan and all other...

Diana Ponce talks on a phone in the yard of her San Pablo home Wednesday, the fifth day of a hunger strike to protest the gathering of armed volunteers, the Minuteman Project, at the Arizona-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Chronicle photo by John O'Hara

Diana Ponce talks on a phone in the yard of her San Pablo home Wednesday, the fifth day of a hunger strike to protest the gathering of armed volunteers, the Minuteman Project, at the Arizona-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States.

Saint Louis -- Students advocating for better pay for Washington University contract workers have ended a six-day hunger strike and will meet with Chancellor Mark Wrighton three times this week to discuss the issue. The agreement was announced late Saturday after Wrighton met with some of the protesters. However, students said they would continue a sit-in at the undergraduate admissions office until they meet with Wrighton on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. About 15 students have been camped out in the admissions office since April 4. Twelve of the protesters began a hunger strike last Monday. The students said they want...

I’ve been wanting to lose some weight and I suppose now’s as good a time as any. With an execution by starvation and dehydration date of March 18, 2005 set for disabled Terri Schiavo, a number of activists are planning a hunger strike and I’m going to join them. The act of self-deprivation in the form of a hunger strike is nothing new, but it’s a hazardous stunt to say the least. In 1981, ten Irish Republican activists joined in a hunger strike as a political statement and soon wound up dead. Through the years, countless political prisoners have met...

Police have entered a Lufthansa plane at Brussels airport, 13 hours after a group of Iranian monachists began a hunger strike and sit-in. The flight arrived on Thursday from Frankfurt, but 59 unarmed European citizens of Iranian origin refused to disembark at Brussels. They are demanding to speak to a member of the European Parliament. The plane has now been moved away from the terminal, but it is not clear if the protest is over. Earlier story http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBAJDMT56E.html shows that Iranian monarchists are demanding diplomats from EU, Russia, US sign a form promising not to help the Islamic regime in...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Several of Saddam Hussein's jailed deputies have been refusing food but Saddam himself is not on hunger strike on the eve of the first anniversary of his capture, an officer in charge of detainees said on Sunday. "It appears that some of the other 11 high-value detainees have been rejecting food, although they continue to snack and to take on liquids," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, deputy director of detainee operations in Baghdad, told Reuters. "We're trying to ascertain who is turning their food back and why," he said. Johnson said those who had rejected food began doing...

THE terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal is again refusing food to protest against conditions in prison, where he is serving a life sentence, one of his lawyers said today. The Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, stopped eating last Wednesday and said he will continue the strike "as long as necessary," attorney Isabelle Coutant Peyre said by telephone. She said he is protesting against being kept in isolation, "provocative and unjustifiable" body and cell searches, and authorities' refusal to let him access his prison bank account for food and other necessities. He is imprisoned at a high-security...

At the Dag Hammerjokld Plaza right across from the United Nations, the seven freedom fighters can be seen staging an indefinite hunger strike peacefully, so that human rights, freedom and democracy may one day thrive in Burma. In an effort to get the United Nations to take serious action on Burma's pressing matters, the seven devout Buddhist activists started their second day by prayers, meditation and a recitation of mantras. Visit our websites: www.hungerstrike4burma.com