

I’ve been held at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial since 2002. Like others here, I’m on hunger strike in protest at my detention without charge. The Trump administration is trying to force us to drop our protest.

I’m currently in solitary confinement – I’ve been stuck here since 19October. A “single cell operation”, that’s what they call it. In fact, it’s isolation. It’s terrible.

I am in Guantánamo Bay. The US government is starving me to death | Khalid Qassim Read more

I’ve twice fallen unconscious in here – a “code yellow”. I’ve also had one “code green”. That’s when you nearly lose consciousness, but you can still hear people.

I think maybe I will spend two months in solitary. They don’t tell you how many days you’ll be here.

I feel pain and weakness and dizziness.

The government is claiming that it keeps a close watch on the health of us hunger strikers, but this is nonsense. In the past, the authorities here would weigh the hunger strikers all the time, to ensure we didn’t die on their watch. Now, they are refusing even to do basic medical checks. They last did a blood test on me about seven months ago.

On 28 October, I woke up and I couldn’t see – everything was blurry. My left eye was hurting a lot. I freaked out. I called out, begging for help. I was terrified that my organs were failing.

Later, I passed out and they called a “code yellow”. A lot of people came: the guards, nurses, and one interpreter. When the interpreter saw the condition I was in, he seemed about to cry.

I begged them to do some blood tests. They didn’t do anything. I went to a senior medical officer, and asked again. He said no. “You’re playing a game,” he told me.

I took a deep breath, and replied: “OK. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I’m asking you to take my blood, and to examine it. I’m not asking you to believe me. Just please, take my blood test.”

They didn’t do it.

That day, I ate to prevent any permanent damage. I ate about 200 calories.

After almost 16 years here, you think you’ve been through everything. But now it’s as though they’re sending us back to the old standard operating procedure – from the bad old days, when we first arrived here. They’ve recently told me: “If you lose some of your organs, it is your choice.” We are like lab rats. I can see and feel the results of this experiment on myself.

My lawyers at Reprieve are going through the courts in the US, trying to get us an independent medical examination. When I read the declarations in that case, made by medical experts, it was amazing. They are saying just what we are saying, and what organisations such as Physicians for Human Rights have said: that you cannot coerce someone off his hunger strike, nor deny him medical attention. That it is unethical to force-feed a hunger striker. These things can be hard to understand if you’re not in detention in places such as these.

Despite everything, the seeds of hope and faith are still there. I planted these the day I came to Gitmo, before I entered the camp and the blocks. I was ear-muffed and couldn’t see anything, then shackled and handcuffed to my belly; chained to the ground, and insulted and beaten with dogs all around. People cursing my mother and cursing me. When I came to Gitmo that day, I planted that faith and that hope. Now it’s like a rose – it still lives to this moment, and never dies.

It’s not even as though we’ve just been in Gitmo for a year or two years. It’s been nearly 16 years, no charges and no trial. It doesn’t make sense. Even in the times of the Inquisition, the dark ages, they had courts.

I always ask the people in charge of the camp: why? If something would happen like this in another country, people would rightly ask, “Why do you put them there for 16 years without a trial?” I will keep asking until they charge or release me.