Activist Anonymous group launches cyber bid to build Gitmo awareness

As the hunger strike protest at US military’s Guantanamo prison camps continues, activist cyber group Anonymous has launched a massive awareness campaign across social networking media, pointing to the persistence of the defiant protest effort by prison inmates for over 100 days.
Code-named ‘Operation Guantanamo,’ the group has begun bombarding the cyber space with a series of “twitterstorms, email bombs and fax bombs since Friday to raise wider awareness in social media concerning the deteriorating conditions for the captives at the notorious detention and torture camp run by the American military.

There are surging reports that the abuse of Guantanamo captives, who are hunger striking to protest their indefinite detention with charges or trials, are growing rampant as force-feeding has reportedly been administered as a form of punishment, rather than a healthcare option.

During the force-feeding procedures, hunger strikers are shackled and strapped to a so-called feeding chair and then a long tube is forced into their stomach through the inmates’ nose to inject liquid nutrients.

What is even more disturbing about the extremely painful practice, condemned by the UN as torture, is that the final decision regarding who will be force-fed is left up to the Guantanamo Commander and not a medical specialist, a recent news report said.

Moreover, lawyers of some of the captives have recently reported new violations of their rights, insisting that inmates are discouraged from contacting their attorneys because prison authorities force them to go through a so-called ‘cavity body search,’ which is highly intrusive and described by some attorneys as resembling ‘sexual assault.’

Most of the Guantanamo inmates have been picked up by American military forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the aftermath of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan under the pretext of removing the Saudi- and Pakistani-backed Taliban regime and bringing stability to the country.