Chelsea Manning has started a hunger strike in Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas in protest at what she calls the bullying of the prison authorities and the US government.
The former army intelligence analyst released a statement on Friday in which she gave an impassioned explanation for why she had taken the decision to stop consuming any food or fluids other than water and prescribed medicines. She said she had reached the decision after six years of military confinement in five difference locations during which her appeals for help had been “ignored, delayed, mocked, given trinkets and lip service by the prison, the military, and this administration”.
The hunger strike is the latest manifestation of an increasingly tense relationship between the army private and her military jailers following her sentence in August 2013 to 35 years in prison for disclosing hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents. She has said that she released the documents in 2010 in an attempt to reveal the true nature of 21st-century asymmetric warfare and diplomacy.
In July, she received treatment in hospital following a recent suicide attempt, which she said on Friday had been prompted by the lack of care she had received for her gender dysphoria. She announced her desire to transition as a woman shortly after her sentencing three years ago, and since then has been running a consistent battle with the military authorities to be allowed to live in the gender to which she relates as opposed to that assigned at birth.
In her statement, Manning protested that she had been denied help for gender dysphoria. She also complained of being subjected to “high-tech bulling” in the form of “constant, deliberate and overzealous administrative scrutiny by prison and military officials”.
“I needed help. Yet, instead I am now being punished for surviving my attempt. When I was a child, my father would beat me repeatedly for simply not being masculine enough. I was told to stop crying – to ‘suck it up’. But, I couldn’t stop crying. The pain just got worse and worse. Until finally, I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. I needed help, but no one came then. No one is coming now.”
Manning wrote that she had reached the point where she was no longer going to be bullied by the system. In addition to her hunger strike, she said she would refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten her hair in any way.
Though the soldier has been granted access to hormones as part of her transition, she has been forced to wear her hair at standard military length for male soldiers. She is fighting a legal battle over that requirement with the help of the ACLU.