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Down the Tubes: The 2013 hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve, July 2013, pp. 30.
Civil liberties
Down the Tubes: The 2013 hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve, July 2013, pp. 30.
01 February 2014
Guantánamo Bay detainees have been on hunger strike since February 2013 in protest against their illegal detention without charge or trial. At the time of publication of this important report, the US Defense Department’s figures indicated that 106 detainees were on hunger strike, with 45 being force-fed. Through collating unclassified evidence from strikers’ letters, calls and visits with lawyers the report shows the impact of the hunger-strike – “some detainees have lost as much as a quarter (Shaker Aamer) or even a third (Ahmed Rabbani) of their weight. Others report health problems including chest pain, low blood pressure, and problems with their sight.” The report finds evidence of “heavy-handed tactics” used by the prison authorities to break the strike. These include: the frequent use of violent procedures (Forcible Cell Extractions) against those who refuse food; the use of unnecessary force during the force-feeding process; a regime of invasive genital searches for any detainees wishing to take calls from family or legal counsel, or attend meetings and the use of solitary confinement as punishment.
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How to close Gitmo: a roadmap. Reprieve, July 2013, pp. 22
This timely report outlines nine key actions that the US administration must implement to end the escalating hunger strike and close Guantánamo Bay, as had been repeatedly promised by President Obama during his election campaigns. Among the steps proposed by Reprieve are the following: the appointment of a White House official with responsibility for closing Guantánamo; ensuring that this official liaises with those seeking the closure of Guantánamo; the issuing of ‘national security waivers’ for the 86 detainees who have already been cleared; the establishment of rehabilitation centres overseen by the Red Cross; the appointment of an independent rapporteur charged with resolving detainee complaints, and the repealing of restrictions on prisoner transfer contained in the last several National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs).
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Independent Commission on Mental Health and Policing Report. Independent Commission on Mental Health and Policing, May 2013, pp. 80.
The Independent Commission on Mental Health and Policing examines how the Metropolitan police deals with incidents involving people with mental health problems. The Commission examined 55 cases where people had died or sustained serious injury during or following contact with the police, and took evidence from people with relevant experience, noting that people with mental health issues complained they were treated like criminals by the police. The report found problems in the following areas, among others: the disproportionate use of force and restraint; discriminatory behaviour; the failure of the Central Communications Command to deal with calls; lack of mental health awareness among staff and officers; lack of police training in suicide prevention; failure to provide adequate care to vulnerable people in custody; problems in inter-agency working; a “disconnect“ between policy and practice; the internal Metropolitan police culture; poor record keeping, and a failure to communicate with families.
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Serco: the company that is running Britain. John Harris,
The Guardian, 29 July 2013.
Serco is one of the biggest ‘public service companies’ with annual pre-tax profits of £302m and a workforce of 53,000 people in 2012. This article investigates the cost-cutting private company and the “mind-boggling” range of activities it undertakes in the UK (and abroad), “taking in no end of things that were once done by the state, but are now outsourced.” Difficulties in investigating Serco arise from the fact that its contracts with government are subject to commercial confidentiality and as a private firm it’s not open to Freedom of Information requests. Some of its better known recent contracts include running Thameside prison where a “report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate found that 60% of its inmates were locked up all day.” Another example is the management of out of hours GP services in Cornwall where “data had been falsified, national standards had not been met, there was a culture of ‘lying and cheating’, and the service offered to the public was simply ‘not good enough’.” A third instance involved the tagging of offenders, where the company was one of two contractors (the other was G4S) “that had somehow overcharged the government for its services, possibly by as much as £50m; there were suggestions that one in six of the tags that the state paid for did not actually exist.” In 2012, despite its scandalous track record, Serco was awarded the contract to run the National Health Service’s (NHS) community-health services in Suffolk (involving among other things, district nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, end-of-life palliative care and wheelchair services) after bidding £16m less than the existing provider. Hundreds of staff had to leave the NHS and become Serco employees and within weeks a huge reorganisation was announced that involved getting rid of one in seven jobs and imposing inferior contracts on the remaining employees. One former NHS worker reported a 50% drop in staffing hours, poor morale, increased administrative tasks and a “farcical” IT regime. She said: “We’ve still got the same number of patients…so the workload has massively increased.”
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