The US military says it will no longer release reports of hunger strikes staged at its notorious Guantanamo Bay prison to the public since disclosing such news is not in its interest."JTF-Guantanamo allows detainees to peacefully protest, but will not further their protests by reporting the numbers to the public," Navy Cmdr. John Filostrat, a spokesman for the military's Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, said Wednesday as reported by The Slate.
"The release of this information serves no operational purpose and detracts from the more important issues, which are the welfare of detainees and the safety and security of our troops," Filostrat said in an e-mail.
Prisoners at Guantanamo have held hunger strikes since shortly after the prison complex was established by the Bush administration in 2001.
The force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo worries human rights advocates more than before as declassified documents showed in October that American military officials secretly used a number of harsh tactics against detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to force them to break their hunger strike.
The Guantanamo prison in southeastern Cuba holds 164 men seized during the US militarys counter-terrorism operations. Most of the prisoners have been held without charge or trial for more than a decade.
Protesting harsh conditions and indefinite detention without charge or trial, Guantanamo prisoners began a hunger strike in early February. The mass protest peaked in July as over 100 prisoners were taking part in the hunger strike.
As of Monday, when the statistics were apparently released for the last time, there were 15 men on hunger strike, up from 11 in mid-November, The Miami Herald reported.
By Press TV
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