I have decided to starve myself – not for reasons health related, nor as a fast of mourning. Instead, I will do so out of desperation.
Allow me to explain.
There are currently 92 detainees at Guantanamo Bay starving themselves, many of whom have been held indefinitely, without charge, for longer than anyone would like to know.
They are starving themselves because they are powerless. They are starving themselves because the only thing in their lives that they have any control over is whether or not they choose to eat.
And so they are choosing to harm themselves, to endanger themselves as a way to protest the harm that is currently being done to them. They are willing risk death as a way to test how far those running Guantanamo are willing to push their inhumane treatment.
The power here is in its desperation. The power of a hunger strike is that it forces those in control to confront the depravity of their actions. It forces those in power to consider the life – the humanity – of those they are controlling.
Seventeen of the detainees are currently being force-fed. They are being forced to live. Military officials can't stomach their deaths.
Why? Why should officials at Guantanamo, indefinitely detaining without charge or plans of a trial a host of detainees, care if they choose to die? Why would they care, having shown little regard for their human rights, for their actual lives as they currently stand?
That's the question military officials deciding to force-feed those starving themselves at Guantanamo must answer for themselves.
And because of this question, I have chosen to starve myself as well. Not indefinitely, as those detainees in Guantanamo are doing, but for a day. Perhaps two, if I am able.
I will starve myself to force those around me – those in my community and those who read my work online – to confront this same question.
Why should we care if they kill themselves when we collectively have shown little regard for their actual lives?