Chelsea Manning begins hunger strike: 'I need help' | Hacker News Reader

Chelsea Manning begins hunger strike: 'I need help'

theverge.com

53 pointsTomte11 comments

Speaking as someone that doesn't condone her actions, solitary is torture. What she's going through is awful. I'm not sure what her ability to access the internet is, and she must be in a terrible mental state and just grasping for some kind of help. If she's going on a hunger strike though, she needs a clear list of demands. Saying she wants her jailers to be kind to her is never going to happen. She's in a military prison and is seen (certainly by the prison staff) as a traitor to the country. Hopefully her friends on the outside can formulate a specific list of things she wants and is willing to end the hunger strike if they are provided.

The media report wasn't very clear. First Manning is in solitary because of the suicide attempt, which every prison does when an inmate tries to kill themselves. You get put in a room under 24/7 surveillance with only a blanket usually for 3 weeks evaluation and sometimes extended if you keep making suicide threats.

The prison disallows any deviation from military grooming regulations. Manning was in genpop, and repeatedly violated this regulation growing out hair/wearing makeup ect so the prison kept pulling her privileges, plus getting Manning thrown back in adseg as punishment. This is what all prisons do when you get written up for minor violations of dress code, after there's nothing left to restrict they just put you in solitary.

tl;dr Manning has won the right to transition to female while being incarcerated through a lawsuit but the military doesn't know how to accomodate this. I'm guessing Manning will get moved to one of the empty wings at Leavenworth, and effectively be in solitary confinement with an entire wing to herself. That will be the prison's concession, we have complied with the lawsuit so here's your new prison to yourself as punishment because there exists no political directives from Washington DC and the military can only follow it's own rulebook.

I don't believe the hunger strike will go well as the military will simply force-feed her.

EDIT: I don't know why I am being downvoted. Gitmo has shown that the military is more than willing to force-feed someone.

I feel for her.

What can we actually do to help, beyond upvoting and discussing it?

Same here. It's disguisting what the "Beacon of Democracy and Freedom" does to those who break the law to expose much bigger crimes.

If you're in the US you can write to your representative. Or organise a movement. But, (as an outsider) I'd suspect, that the more you do, the more you'll get your own life into trouble. But, I'll stand corrected if persuaded to the contrary.

For her specifically, I'm afraid short of a mass popular movement to free her, not much.

EDIT: Although, making her situation as public as possible might help ease the most blatant abuse she's suffering. Sometimes the state cares about extremely bad publicity. But there are no guarantees.

I am sympathetic to her cause and I think we can all universally support her call for human respect and dignity.

I realized a few things from this article and from her: 1) It's too easy to up-vote or give it a nod and move on 2) I'm generally ignorant about her story and the issues around it 3) She is wildly courageous

One and two go hand-in-hand and I would blame myself for being complicit in her dignity, respect or rights being violated. I started taking a look around to learn more and understand more, and it is limited. This helped a little bit (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wikileaks-manning-idUS...). No surprise that most of the headlines are focused on WikiLeaks, or her transition. So, if you have more information on her current struggle, I'd be grateful if you shared it here.

Finally, I have to highlight her courage in releasing information related to WikiLeaks, transitioning while in prison, and now, continuing to fight for herself.

I don't understand how our democracies have led to so much instutionalized cruelty, what's the goal? Deterrence? Does it make sense to be afraid of a single individual to the point of depriving this person of so much? It's really sad.

It's hard to see - to open my eyes and see a person in this state - and let's not forget that she's hardly the only one. We only know about Ms. Manning's situation because she's famous.

Criminals should go to jail (I'm not referring to Ms. Manning's legal status, just speaking generally), sometimes wars must be fought, but while we do what is necessary we don't want to be a criminals or war-mongers ourselves, and therefore we should treat even prisoners with respect and compassion.

I was reading elsewhere that prisons are cutting food to save money; it's inhuman and criminal.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/26/491236253/ram...

If the idea behind the punishment of prison is to remove someone from society, shouldn't that be enough? Why is our society accepting and in some cases even encouraging things like torture, rape, solitary confinement, etc. for prisoners? This status change to nonhuman begins upon accusation so it's not even reserved for criminals.

Basically society says it's OK to do anything to the accused and especially to the convicted. In for panhandling or drinking in public? Our society agrees that it's ok for you to get raped, beaten, maybe even murdered. After all, you must have done something terrible to be in jail or prison. Even if you're innocent.

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