CHELSEA MANNING HUNGER STRIKE
ATRANSGENDER soldier imprisoned in the US for leaking classified information to the WikiLeaks website says she is on a hunger strike until her treatment improves.
Chelsea Manning – who attended Tasker Milward school in Pembrokeshire for four years – said she began the hunger strike because her pleas for better treatment at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, had been ignored.
She says she will not voluntarily consume anything except water and prescription medication.
Ms Manning is serving a 35-year sentence at an all-male military facility after she leaked secret cables to WikiLeaks.
In the statement supplied by her American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, Ms Manning said the hunger strike will continue until she receives the “minimum standards of dignity, respect and humanity” and she is prepared for the possibility of dying.
Ms Manning, who was arrested as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 in military court of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents.
Her hunger strike follows a suicide attempt earlier this year.
Her lawyers had accused the US military of violating her privacy by revealing that she had been admitted to hospital.
The army had not disclosed the reason for the hospital admission but it was linked to a suicide attempt in media reports.
Ms Manning’s legal team said in a statement: “Last week, Chelsea made a decision to end her life.
“She would have preferred to keep her private medical information private.
“She knows that people have questions about how she is doing and she wants everyone to know that she remains under close observation by the prison and expects to remain on this status for the next several weeks.”
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth for leaking reams of war logs, diplomatic cables and battlefield video to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in 2010.
She was convicted under her previ- ous name, Bradley, and shortly thereafter announced she would start living as a woman.
Last year she was approved for hormone therapy after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria – the sense of one’s gender being at odds with the sex assigned at birth.
Her Welsh aunt, Sharon Staples, from Haverfordwest, and Wales-born mum, Susan Manning, have previously spoken of Ms Manning’s treatment in prison. It was reported that Ms Manning was locked up for up to 23 hours a day over a period of 11 months during solitary confinement.