![\"Guantanamo_01web\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/eltecolote.org\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Guantanamo_01web.jpg?resize=531%2C744&quality=89&ssl=1\")
\nBehind a 3-meter high electric fence and under the permanent surveillance of 435 U.S. Marines,166 political prisoners are locked in Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
\nCurrently, 104 inmates have been on hunger strike for over 150 days; 44 of them being fed against their will.
\nIn late May, U.S. authorities made the decision to force-feed them. The force-feeding consists of tying the prisoner to a chair by his body, feet and hands, and placing a cannula of about 4 millimeters in diameter loaded with a nutritional supplement that goes down the nose into the stomach.
\nAccording to an account by Obaidullah, an Afghan prisoner, their complaints began on Feb. 6, after the guards took away disrespectfully their Korans.
\nThis was taken as a lack of respect for the religious prisoners, since in Islam it is an affront that an unbeliever touches the holy book, which led to the hunger strike.
\nThe complaint then extended to other topics that generate nuisance among prisoners: the dehumanizing treatment, the impossibility of communication with their families and lawyers, the harsh discipline, psychological and physical harassment, lack of proper judicial trials and lack of evidence against them.
\nJohn Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, alleged abuses at the prison such as the \u201cChinese drop\u201d (a prisoner is strapped down and drops of water are shed on the forehead to not let him sleep), waterboarding, the deprivation of sleep, exposure to extreme heat and cold, sexual humiliation and other methods of interrogation and torture employed by China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as exposed by the New York Times in mid-2008.
\nThe origin of the Guantanamo base dates back to the early twentieth century, when Cuba gained independence from Spain and the United States took advantage of the conflict to take Guantanamo Bay, installing one of its 76 military bases in Latin America.
\nThe naval base began to be used as an illegal detention center after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the U.S. and British invasion in Afghanistan under the assumption that Afghan groups were involved in the terrorist attack.
\nUnder U.S. occupation, many Afghan civilians were illegally extradited to the high security detention camp at Guantanamo, deprived of their freedom and confined every day, for 22 hours, in a single cell with no windows to the outside, wearing orange overalls as the ones used in death row.
\nOf the 779 people who have passed through Guant\u00e1namo, the only prisoner tried by a U.S. federal court is Ahmed Ghailani, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2011 for attacking two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
\nOthers were killed or committed suicide by hanging themselves with the sheets of their beds. No autopsies were conducted, as Guantanamo is not considered to be under U.S. legal jurisdiction.
\nWhile closure of the prison was one of the fervent campaign promises of President Barack Obama, who in 2009 announced its temporary cessation\u2014he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Dec. 31, 2011, allowing the indefinite detention of prisoners and adding constraints instead of getting them out of prison.<\/p>\n