“We are slowly dying in here,” Mohammad Mahjoub saysover the phone on day 67 of his hunger strike, day 56 for Mahmoud Jaballahand Hassan Almrei. “Our situation is very bad.”

The three men, held indefinitely under the much-criticized securitycertificate regime of secret evidence and deportation to torture, are keptat the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre (KIHC), dubbed Guantanamo North.Despite last week’s visit by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, whodid not meet with the detainees, there has been no negotiation with themen, and no effort to end a critical situation that could turn deadly atany time.

No medical monitoring

Indeed, the detainees’ lives are on the line as staff at the facility playa dangerous game of roulette: despite considerable medical literaturespelling out the need for daily medical checks of hunger strikers who havepassed day 10 without food, medical staff have not conducted a singlephysical check on any of the detainees, who are subsisting on water andjuice.

The need to check weight, pulse, blood pressure, respiration,electrolytes, and sodium and potassium levels, among other standards, isessential in preventing the kind of traumatic incident that occurred last weekend.

On Saturday, January 27, Mr. Jaballah reports that he felt dizziness atabout 3:15 p.m., pressed the emergency button, and someone finally saw him atapproximately 4:00 p.m. He was very weak and unable to walk, and requested thatif he needed to be taken to another area for medical help, that this bedone with a wheelchair or cart.

He was informed that a cart would arrive at6:00 p.m. He again felt quite ill, pressed the emergency button, fell down, andwas rendered unconscious, only waking up in another section of the KIHC. Hereports experiencing great pain that left him screaming, and a completelack of control over his body, with uncontrollable shivering and shaking.

“Because there has been no daily monitoring of blood, pulse, weight, orother vital signs, it is hard to pinpoint the exact cause of this incident,but our consultation with a Toronto-area physician who has attended to oneof the men during a prior hunger strike says that low potassium or sodiumcould be one cause, coupled with dehydration and possible heartarrhythmia,” says Matthew Behrens of the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials inCanada.

“Needless to say, all of these can lead to a suddenlife-threatening drop in blood pressure that could place any of the men ina coma.”

Detainees very weak

Daily calls from the detainees indicate they are so weak that they spendmost of the day lying down. One has blood in his urine. Another issuffering the severe effects of high blood pressure. Another has broken outin severe skin rashes causing incessant itching, while a severely swollentongue has not been dealt with either. All are weak and dizzy from twomonths without food. And there is no end in sight.

The detainees, their families, and friends and supporters are concernedthat Stockwell Day used his trip to KIHC to justify his preconceived notionof the situation, rather than use the occasion as an opportunity toactually learn the real reasons behind the hunger strike.

Stockwell Day not getting full picture

Stockwell Day did not get a full picture when he visited Guantanamo North.He was unable to taste the daily humiliation the men face at the hands ofguards, nor to hear what it is like to be denied medical treatment forthings like Hepatitis C, blood in the urine, or a double hernia.

Day neededto hear what it is like to be held indefinitely, without charge, on secretevidence, for upwards of seven years, as these men are living through, tounderstand that having a microwave and a TV in your facility does nothingto ease the pain of lengthy separation from families, the mental torture ofbeing held on secret “evidence” neither you nor your lawyer will ever getto challenge, and the daily fear of deportation to torture in Syria orEgypt.

Day also did not get a taste of what it’s like when there is no oversightagency or ombudsperson to deal fairly with complaints, a key reason for thehunger strike that was in fact flagged by the federal government’s2005/2006 Annual Report of the Correctional Investigator, which concluded:

    The transfer of detainees from Ontario facilities to the Kingston holdingcentre means that the detainees will lose the benefit of a rigorousombudsman’s legislative framework to file complaints about their care andhumane treatment while in custody.

    The Office of the CorrectionalInvestigator is concerned that the detainees will no longer have thebenefits and legal protections afforded by ombudsman legislation. Pursuantto the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, a non-profitorganization with no legislative framework, such as the Red Cross, isunlikely to meet the protocol’s requirement for domestic oversight.” (Seebelow for full text of relevant section of the report)

Initial hopes dashed

Mahmoud Jaballah explains that despite initial hopes that things might bebetter at KIHC than they were at Metro West Detention in Toronto, thepunitive, mean-spirited atmosphere that has taken hold of the facility,especially after they initially raised minor complaints about guards’behaviour, has become intolerable. Guards are regularly slamming celldoors, making rude comments, and making daily life difficult for the men,who are not allowed to speak to pre-approved media without those sameguards present.

The threat they feel to their personal safety, and the even greater fear offalse allegations being made against them, means they are now trapped in anOrwellian nightmare that could cause them their lives.

The men are told that health care, which used to be available to them intheir living unit, can now only be delivered in the next building. The mensay they do not feel safe going to the next building without a supervisorpresent so there is a witness to possible false allegations that could harmtheir chances for bail. (The facility is top-heavy with staff, includingtwo directors, two secretaries, seven supervisors, 12 guards — all for thethree men.) So unless they comply with petty and unreasonable prison rules,they are denied a basic human right.

Last week, a group of some 70 health workers across Canada challenged thelack of ethical standards at KIHC, and campaign representatives point outthat the World Medical Association Declaration on Hunger Strikers (adoptedby the 43rd World Medical Assembly Malta, November 1991 and editoriallyrevised by the WMA General Assembly, Pilanesberg, South Africa, October2006) states at point #5 that:

    Physicians attending hunger strikers canexperience a conflict between their loyalty to the employing authority(such as prison management) and their loyalty to patients. Physicians withdual loyalties are bound by the same ethical principles as otherphysicians, that is to say that their primary obligation is to theindividual patient.

As each minute ticks by, the spectre of the Criminal Code of Canada loomslarger, which defines as criminally negligent anyone who “in doing anythingor, in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do, shows wanton orreckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.”