Hunger Strike Solidarity Fast: Day 3

From the Archive

Guantánamo prisoner hunger strike day 48

Dear friends,

Peace to you all, and I hope that your fast is bearing fruit in your life and your community. A fellow faster from Nashville, TN sends this spirited check-in:

Day one of my fast (Monday) was fine. My stomach is a weird thing. If I tell myself I am fasting for a cause, I don’t seem to get hungry at all; but, if there is no cause, I stay hungry all the time. That tells me that hunger is largely in my mind.
I had a soup and sandwich Monday night. As I write this, it is Tues afternoon, and I am not hungry at all. My next planned meal is Wednesday around 8:30 pm (approx 48 hours without food).
Wish me luck and lets work to close the Gitmo prison and the Gitmo Naval base and give it back to Cuba!
Joey King
Veterans for Peace

We have also learned from a few more attorneys that the people in Guantanamo know of and appreciate our efforts. Please continue to spread the word about what is happening in Guantanamo. Make phone calls to the White House, Department of Defense & Southern Command (they tend to be chatty @ Southcom) – numbers can be found here: http://www.witnesstorture.org/blog/2013/03/20/hunger-strike-response/
We have managed to put at least one letter in the mail to each prisoner in Guantanamo. Please continue to flood the prison with mail: http://www.witnesstorture.org/letter-writing-campaign/. And share with us (so we can share with others) any stories or reflections on how the fast is going and what activities are happening in your community.

The prisoner writing below is particularly wrenching, a letter from Adnan Latif who died at Guantánamo last September. I hope that the opening poem by Maddie, one of the Creighton students we were privileged to spend time with in Chicago, will help us read this difficult writing in the context of practicing “depth and humanity,” love and growth, awareness and compassion.

Love and hope to you my sisters and brothers, and to the men at Guantánamo whose life has become a struggle for justice.

My Sustenance

Madison Felipe

My ignorance keeps me sane
It blinds me from the ceaseless wars
My ignorance keeps me innocent
Irresponsible of any harm
My ignorance keeps me stagnant
Prevents any motion or stirring
My ignorance keeps me useless
Giving me nothing to Offer
I shatter my ignorance
That has coddled me so
I welcome the cries of the tormented
They bring me depth and humanity
I cherish the change and growing pains
Wash away my innocence
Make me insane
Send me down the river
Break the illusion
Enlighten me

Letter from Adnan Latif

Do whatever you wish to do, the issue is over.

I am happy to express from this darkness and draw a true picture of the condition in which I exist. I am moving towards a dark cave and a dark life in the shadow of a dark prison. This is a prison that does not know humanity, and does not know [anything] except the language of power, oppression and humiliation for whoever enters it. It does not differentiate between a criminal and the innocent, and between the right of the sick or the elderly who is weak and is unable to bear and a man who is still bearing all this from the prison administration that is evil in mercy.

Hardship is the only language that is used here. Anybody who is able to die will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no other hope except that. The requirement is to announce the end, and challenge the self love for life and the soul that insists to end it all and leave this life which is no longer anymore called a life, instead it itself has become death and renewable torture. Ending it is a mercy and happiness for this soul.

I will not allow any more of this and I will end it. I will send [move] it to a world that is much better than this world. There, the real life will live again that will be filled with complete happiness and be rid of all harassments. There, the environment will clear up, things will calm down and you will be able to relax and you will not see the world of evil people.

I am in need of a person who blindfolds his eyes from me [looks the other way] and leaves me in my freedom so that I can choose my end. With all my pains, I say goodbye to you and the cry of death should be enough for you.

A world power failed to safeguard peace and human rights and from saving me. I will do whatever I am able to do to rid myself of the imposed death on me at any moment of this prison.