I’m speaking with Mr. Michael Ratner, the President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the US lawyer for Julian Assange. The Center for Constitutional Rights also represents several of the inmates at the Guantanamo detention camp.
Continue After The Break


Greeting
Robles: Your center represents several of the inmates at Guantanamo. There are reports of a massive hunger strike going on. The U.S. is using this “hunger strike light” criteria, I think to keep the numbers down. Can you tell us the real situation there? What’s really going on?
Ratner: Our lawyers have visited recently, we get reports from many of our lawyers. There are 166 people at Guantanamo. We think there is well over a hundred on a hunger strike, perhaps, 120. At least 20 of them are being force fed and the US, of course, tries to minimize the number and tries to diminish the reasons for it, but it’s pretty clear to us.
We are now in the 12th year of many of those people having been at Guantanamo. The majority have been cleared for release, which means even the United States doesn’t think they ought to be there. Eighty-six have been cleared for release, over half, and Obama has made no indication at all, until the hunger strike, that he cared at all about them.
The Administration began on a theory or an idea that they were going to close it and then slowly, because of his actions in particular, they failed to close it, and so now there is really nothing left. I mean, we are the lawyers for them and we can’t win our cases anymore. There’re no cases left to get them out and I think it’s at a point when they realize, that unless they take actions themselves, unless they take their own lives into their own control, nothing is going to change, and I hesitate to say it, but I think they’ re right.
This is now, since the hunger strike, it has become front page news again. Yesterday, Obama had to make a speech about it, the UN Human Rights Commission and other rapporteurs have come out with a very strong statement about the hunger strike and it has become a big issue now on the radio, media etc.
My hopes are that that is now putting it back front and center in the United States and that people would be out urging that Guantanamo be closed.
I mean it’s shocking to believe that you would call the United States civilized with keeping Guantanamo opened. They themselves, as I’ve said, over half of people have been cleared for release, and Obama has not let any of them out.
Robles: That’s unbelievable, I mean, how are the American people dealing with that? I mean, how can that be logically acceptable to anybody?They’re basically holding these people for no reason?
Ratner: For no reason! Exactly, they’re holding people now in an offshore prison without any basis in law, outside the law. And how do the American people accept it? In part, they accept it because Obama’s leadership just fell, so now you had the Republicans who set up Guantanamo, they are not going to care. The Democrats whose president now doesn’t seem to care about it. The media didn’t seem to care about it, let go of it. They’re Muslim, that’s another thing, and they’re off in Guantanamo, so it was hard to get any traction in the last couple of years. And the courts didn’t care.
So the last couple of years have been very difficult for everybody concerned with Guantanamo and now that they have decided on the hunger strike, now it’s finally getting the news that it should have gotten a long time ago. Sadly it has taken a hunger strike to do it.
What’s also interesting about the hunger strike is Obama’s speech yesterday. Obama gives a speech in which he says it’s a stain on America! I have to close Guantanamo! it’s hurting our international standing! It lessens our cooperation with our allies, etc., etc.
Robles: He said all that before…
Reminder
Ratner: What did you just say?
Robles: I said he said all that before, during his election campaign.
Ratner: I’m very glad to hear you say that because I looked up the speech he gave on May 21, 2009, three months after he took the office. While it is not verbatim, it’s almost exactly what I’ve just said. It says: the prison in Guantanamo has weakened America’s national security etc, etc. So he said the same thing four and a half years ago that he said yesterday.
The New York Times ran his speech on the front page today, which is at least a sign, but again it’s all Obama’s nice words and the question is: what will his actions be?
And if you read that speech, he didn’t say any actions other than sending 40 nurses to Guantanamo to help with the hunger strike, to help force feed people.
Now one thing I should say about force-feeding is: under medical ethics it’s illegal to force feed people. If someone is making a decision, and it’s a conscious decision, and they’re sane when they make it; they are allowed to not eat and force themselves to die if that’s where it goes.
They don’t have a right medically, to force feed someone. It’s just like if you are in the hospital and you say-take me off the machines; you have that right to do it. But Obama has insisted on force-feeding people and it’s, as I said. The AMA, our biggest, most, really moderate, medical association. The American Medical Association, came out with a statement saying force-feeding is not authorized, is not ethical, under medical ethics and rules.
Robles: There is just another law that has been trampled on and broken at Guantanamo. This brings to mind the hunger strikers… I don’t know if you might remember back when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and I think it was like 9 Irish Republic Army members starved themselves to death: nobody did anything then.
Ratner: I know the cases well actually. The most famous of them was man named Bobby Sands, that’s actually where the law got established, really got established, that you can’t intervene if someone has made a decision not to eat.
I was just in London the other day, I talked to the lawyers for Bobby Sands. They said it was really important, sadly that he died but it actually changed the policy. Those were political prisoners, and it actually forced the discussion and changed the policy, and that’s what it took.
I don’t want that to happen here, I want the policy to change but I don’t want any of our clients to die at Guantanamo. But Obama is acting illegally in force-feeding people who’ve made a decision that they don’t want to eat.
Robles: I see. That has not been brought up anywhere that I’ve seen so far. It’s not really part of the debate and thank you for bringing that up, because I think that that’s very important.
Do you feel that there might be some nefarious reasons for keeping these people there? I’m thinking: you know, these people, these were young men they’ve spent most of their best years locked up. Could it that they are trying to create terrorists?
Ratner: I would hope not. That would be a bad idea. What we’ve noticed of the people that have been released… To be hones, they’re so shattered after their ten or twelve years there. The chances of them becoming terrorists are really low.
I met a lot of the people in London and other places, all they want to do is piece their lives together. Some of them haven’t seen their children for ten or twelve years, a couple of them had their wives pregnant when they were put in, they’ve never seen their children, they’ve never hugged them. These people don’t come out and do anything.
You know, I don’t get it! It just seems that they played to the sort of popular will. You know, it’s horrible in the United States! They painted Guantanamo as the “worst of the worst”, the Busies did. Obama then was weak-kneed about letting people out, he played into it, and the American population.
End of part one.
Please visit our website in the near future for a continuation of this interview with Michael Ratner, the President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the US lawyer for Julian Assange.
Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_05_03/Obama-is-holding-people-at-Guantanamo-for-no-reason-and-force-feeding-them-illegally-Michael-Ratner/