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Gitmo Reports Fewer Hunger-Strikers
CAROL ROSENBERG
Miami Herald
June 5, 2006
The military on Sunday reported a considerable decline in the number of hunger-striking detainees at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- down to 18 shunning food from about a fifth of the captives at the height of the protest last week.
Also, a captive who had been considered a hard-core hunger striker began eating over the weekend, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, prison camps' spokesman.
The captive had been nourished for five months by a tube tethered through his nose into his stomach, insert twice a day for 45-minute feedings.
As of Sunday, Durand said, four of the 18 were receiving tube nourishment.
None was in immediate danger, he said.
Durand could provide no immediate explanation for the change of heart by the long-term faster. Nor could he say why dozens of detainees who began their fast May 25 had resumed eating before the weekend.
''Hunger striking itself takes a lot of willpower,'' said Durand, ``and when someone goes on a hunger strike we continue to offer them meals . . . we continue to offer them medical counseling about the long-term effects.''
Under Guantánamo procedures, a captive who refuses to eat nine meals in a row is classified as a hunger striker. Nasal-tube feedings begin sometime after that, once a doctor, nurse of corpsman advises the captive that he is risking his health, Durand said.
A captive is removed from the hunger-strike roster after he eats nine meals in a row.
At its height, June 1, Guantánamo recorded 89 of the 465 or so detainees held there were on fasts.
At the time, commanders theorized the hunger-striking captives were trying to rally international sympathy ahead of the resumption of war crimes tribunals at the remote base, planned for June 12.
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