u.s. officials in the mainstream media dismiss and ignore allegations of a life threatening. more than one hundred detainees are reportedly on hunger strike for a second. in syria some western nations are ready. to the rebels including. complete in china with a new president and prime minister political policies that will shape. the quest of extraterrestrial life. europe's plans for a new mission. curiosity rover mission top stories.

international news and comment live from a studio here this is with you twenty four hours a day lawyers for more than one hundred detainees on a hunger strike at guantanamo bay say many of them are close to death the situation has become so desperate representatives of the captives have made a direct appeal to the u.s. defense secretary but u.s. officials deny the allegations much of the mainstream media remains are moved. on reports. guantanamo detainees have been on a hunger strike for more than a month now the facility which is now on strike holds most of the inmates there one hundred thirty people out of one hundred sixty six the total number of prisoners at guantanamo the detainees through their lawyers say most of them are taking part in this we cannot verify exactly how many will left

a message with robert do ran the media person for guantanamo very much hope he will get back to us the attorneys for the detainees are saying their health is deteriorating we spoke with. her client there says he lost twenty pounds is the beginning of the strike at the beginning of february said she and a number of other attorneys had sent a letter with their questions to the authorities at guantanamo copying the justice department she said they had to respond to it. just point the strike is more than thirty days old old and by a forty by we understand from medical experts there are serious health repercussions that start happening things like lost hearing chancel blindness and in a couple of weeks worse than that ultimately you know chancellor as they are for this well it strikes continue for weeks no response to that letter so our parties also say they want to response from the authorities more meaningful than the few remarks

by the prison spokesperson in the media robert duran i mentioned him earlier responded to the allegations that the prisoners copies of the koran had been mistreated and that's what presumably triggered the strike he said it was a routine search for contraband and quote the koran is treated with the outmost respect end of quote it may very well be so from the conversations that we had with the lawyers i got a sense that this act of desperation is not just about the koran the lawyers are saying that these detainees desperately want to get the word out about the situation that they're in not formally accused of anything not knowing whether they're ever going to see their day in court detained indefinitely the u.n. says holding detainees indefinitely at guantanamo bay amounts to torture four years ago president obama signed an executive order to stop torture there but according to the u.n. indefinite detention itself is also a form of torture it's hard to measure the degree of desperation among the inmates there half of them eighty six to be precise are sitting there with papers from the

u.s. government which clear them for release and yet they're still there are human rights organizations where port hundreds of suicide attempts at least seven of them were successful a detainee named odd non latif took his own life last september he was cleared for release by both bush and obama administrations and yet never released he had spent eleven years at one tunnel that gives some idea about the level of hopelessness cause. by indefinite detention so it's somewhat obvious that through this hunger strike the detainees want to make themselves heard and it's not easy where one of very few channels to congress this story there is a desire to kind of forget about guantanamo it's very much reflected in the mainstream media here and in the scarce we're porting that we have seen on the air in washington i'm going to check on well human rights groups around the world to raising the alarm over the cruelty being inflicted at guantanamo but to mark mason

he's an expert on depression he says the conditions get most detainees are being held in a little short of torture we are social animals very few of us run off to the mountains and live in a cave not at all to be facetious but each one of us has very important schuman interactions ranging from our family members to communities and now quite frankly with the internet we are should not put this is side is something trivial to me and many people in our generation in this day and age i have important contacts people important tomorrow life around the globe so putting people and the isolation chamber alone is is unequivocally torture treatment we have the conditions here where they know they're in indefinite detention and that context where we have individuals incarcerated

isolated from each other and they don't know if they're going to get out tomorrow or never and that sets up a circumstance for extreme a psychological stress and human rights activists seem courageous she believes the only hope remaining is that obama will stick to his promise to shut guantanamo in the next four years despite the majority of americans being indifferent. inside america basically there's there is no real. public resentment of what is taking place there most of the pressure that's coming is internationally yes you have some groups are working very hard to highlight the issue and to make sure that it stays on the agenda but unfortunately for the vast majority of americans they're quite happy for these detainees to continue you know detained without charge or trial basically a one time numbers ever going to close it's going to be within these next four

years. a bomb has the best so pushing to do that miss is a second time we cannot have. you know and where hoping. it might be misplaced our hope but basically here we're trying use these last years of his presidency in order to do the right thing in a situation where the only thing that has ever happened is the wrong thing. and on our website at the moment we want to know your opinion on the matter every voice counts and r.t. dot com where you can tell us when and if you think that guantanamo bay will eventually close well let's have a look at the results we see here on screen so far most of you believe that it will always be open because washington has no interest in closing it down that sixty two percent around a fifth say that the facility will cease to exist when the u.s. runs out of funds money to maintain it and slightly less of you well you reckon it

will close off to another prison is set up as a replacement and barely any at the moment about three percent we can see that i think the painful history of guantanamo will end when the us defeat international terrorism because to hear from you if you haven't already cost your vote it is r t v dot com online all the time have your say we're interested in what you think. the bloody conflict in syria has reached a third year and yet some european nations want to pour more weapons into the crisis torn country eve foreign ministers will look at the possibility of lifting an arms embargo on syria next week after france and britain made a major push to put more guns into the hands of anti assad forces the civil war's already claimed an estimated seventy thousand lives well earlier we spoke to. she has followed the nation's plight from the beginning. i always compare today's syria with the country i once visited before war and hatred and devastation came to these

lands what we see today the country is destroyed. and its heritage is damaged and despair is in the and fight is in the air so it's very painful to look at how the country actually has been changed i've talked once to two father whose son was just killed in a fight in the clashes he was he was so called process i was like how you feel about that you just lost your kid and he was like i'm proud to be the father of a martyr because this is this is a fight against forces that. want to destroy our country and i want to protect my country and here is my input to this fight the hardest thing for me and for my crew was to to understand that to digest if you want. peace and war we're sharing the same reality and gunman killing innocent civilians and

children. cutting has of their people and again civilians taking dinners and families walking on the streets in the same place at the same time and me is part of this reality as well there was there was the most difficult thing to understand because they still see the future in syria but not in syria which is right now on the ground but in that syria that they used to leave before it's been a country of an amazing diversity it's been it's been one of the strongest points of assyrians. it's been eventually turned to this series weakest points and i've been working on these idea and his model portable that this part of syria known as mesopotamia between the tigris and euphrates rivers is considered a cradle of civilization has been home to many asked nic and religious groups

living in peace and harmony for ages people here believe this diversity is serious strong point but some warn it could also be used against the country and that's something to destroy. and the regime slogans in syria have been repeated to the longest of all the arab spring countries but assad didn't step down within weeks like the leaders of to measure and egypt nor did his regime fall within months like colonel gadhafi is in libya opposing sides have gone beyond demonstrations and clashes killings have become an everyday reality those wanting to go both at home and abroad have decided to target with hurt the most serious diversity pitting people against each other after every massacre and every killing rivers of blood have been joined by streams of mutual accusations and hatred. the first blow was dealt to relations between the country's sunni majority

and the ruling she had minority some more ignorant position and sometimes. needed to make a city and it's not the more the once the one i don't. keep our unity we live in all of all of. it gabriel and poise from commercially livin in series ne all green sunni dominated turkey and mostly shia iraq says here in about six terran intolerance is something new for syria and very alarming for your. will feel this pressure for months now especially from gulf countries trying to drag us to this perilous share soon again it's a big threat because a tear society from the inside. and some say it's been feud from the outside it is part of the u.s. strategy and some of the western strategy is to destroy syria by syrians and by

arabs and this they are doing successfully another blow followed with an explosion at palestinian refugee camps in syria and the cold blooded murder of palestinian conscripts these drove a wedge between the two arab peoples previously on friendly terms they wanted to both weaken the regime and spread despair among palestinians. with kurdish villages in syria's north east targeted the kurdish syrian peaceful co-existence has also been endangered but one o'clock its approval cations appear in very dangerous moment syrian kurds want to be integrated into syrian society have rights and be respected some turkish kurds maybe do as early ones killing his own people we've never been treated like that of course when violence targets us it can't not affect relations. and fears are that those who wanted to see the fall of the regime

weakness the country's fall instead. from syria. and doughty contributor afshin rattansi he told me that the desire to. find his could eventually backfire on the foreign nations doing it by definition that would be supplied by the french and british governments would be in the wrong hands because they are supplying rebels in a civil war and therefore they are the wrong hands no matter who the britain or france and so this is i suppose what's interesting here is that washington is much more nervous about the arming of rebels because they are obviously concerned that the afghanistan scenario is beginning yet again but it is so sad that leaders of countries like france and britain can think of these as the mists because the blowback will be phenomenal altie life his in moscow will get more

reaction on top story shortly and that is the hunger strike in guantanamo bay i'll be talking to a lawyer who represents a couple of the detainees there that'll be live after the break stay with us. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew. i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. is he.

the life here in moscow let's return to our top story now and that is the crisis at guantanamo where one hundred detainees are reportedly on hunger strike for the second month well let's get some reaction inside from steven intrude he's a lawyer representing two guantanamo bay detainees have you heard anything from your clients are they on the hunger strike as well. well i haven't actually been

down there since october so i don't know for sure but i'm sure that they are affected by it one way or the other and if they were striking why what is it that is upset in these detainees why are they so desperately now. well they're desperate now because they've been there for ten or eleven years and they remember the evil abuses that were visited upon them when they were first there and starting in the summer of two thousand and twelve there were various clampdowns and restrictions first on attorneys travelling to the base and that was rejected by a court but they have been other more recent events which have led them to take this rather extreme step of the hunger strike which is their only effective tool they have to resist in protest and those jews have involved seizure of

personal materials seizure of attorney client materials and most importantly improper handling of the koran which is to them a very sacred book and which when it is mishandled it is a an act of sacrilege and that is what has kindled the immediate reaction which is led to a hunger strike from your point of view would any of that abuse amount to torture. no i don't know that handling of the qur'an is itself torture although it does we inflict obvious emotional pain is certainly not to be compared with what used to go on there which is largely ended but the current regime still employs solitary confinement which as a punitive measure which is

a very strictly regulated under the geneva conventions and those conventions bind to the military authorities who are running the camp let me quickly ask you already have your detainees bad and yet they have been cleared for release. because one of them has been and is that against international law what are you going to do about it it's against international just briefly or action as a lawyer from your point of view just briefly. well indefinite detention is itself against the geneva conventions so yes i would have to say that it is against international law and it is binding on the united states. stephen interest thank you very much indeed for joining us live that from washington steven introduce a lawyer representing to guantanamo bay detainees thank you very much. bahrain

has been engulfed by clashes between protesters and police on the second anniversary of a saudi intervention which crushed a pro democracy uprising security forces fought stun grenades and tear gas at thousands of angry much as it burned time and held stones at police side howdy he's a former m.p. from bahrain's largest opposition party says the people are outraged by the government's reluctance to admit there is a crisis. the collective punishment is a. kind of policy of the. security forces also on. the security forces this makes a problem and worth the thirteen don't want to admit it's a political problem no political for human rights situation which makes the people . the people insist the state and wrote this for me and to show

intention to continue to end when the moment comes they achieve their goals. stay up to speed with the current international news online at r.t. dot com where today we report on an ill fated campaign a report suggests the much anticipated nato withdrawal from afghanistan and twenty fourteen will leave the country defenseless against militant attacks. just days after the inauguration of the new pope the pontiff sr claims he's just the man to cope with the many scandals surrounding the catholic church you can find out more at r.t. dot com.

in china the shift from one generation of leaders to the next one is complete new prime minister is now in charge of the world's second largest economy he faces the challenge of boosting economic growth which is slowed in recent years a recent report from pricewaterhouse coopers say that by twenty seventeen china will match the u.s. as the world's leading economy before surging ahead also set to increase is military spending while the struggle for regional influence between beijing and washington is longstanding and now this map shows how the u.s. has increased its military presence a source of concern for china's leaders c.c.t.v. correspondent john weiss says that the growth of american influence in the region is fueling local disputes. there used to be a superstitious belief almost in china about eight percent growth rate of the

national g.d.p. over that number has been slowed down to about seven point five percent it has to be a slowdown number because china is doing this transition from growth we want to teach growth in quality many argue it is extremely important to do reform reform really has been the key word for the new generation of leaders coming into power recently mr leask which outweighs the now the cut chinese premier he's been talking about reform is the largest dividend china can enjoy every support for the progress the new president mr xi jinping after being elected was called the immediately two of president obama and he advocated the two countries could have mutual respect and openness to one another things can be better and he's been talking about a new kind of relations between new powers and that of course the definition is not being given by the chinese side however it seems that the u.s. has already got its own definition for example cuba to asia or rebalancing and as

a result there has been increasing number of turturro disputes or disputes in other stores between china and some of the asian neighbors with the coming in the united states might be a backup for them in the region but the chinese seems always want to have a peaceful neighborhood that's seems to be a really believe the chinese have been holding over the history scouring the red planet for traces of life means rising up to some technical challenges and one of the toughest is digging deep into its soil and that's the goal of a brand new mission that's just been agreed by the european and russian space agencies a rover to be sent to miles in twenty eighteen will drill thirty times further below the surface than the currently operating curiosity vehicle with more on the ambitious plans. the search for the past or present life on mars screen to news and this time scientists are digging deep exo mars project is based on to freeze exploration first in two thousand and sixteen russian proton heavy rocket to

usually used for delivering satellites and space station components should blast off from lack of a cosmodrome in kazakhstan sending a european orbital pool and a stationary test lander to the red planet speech to his plan for two thousand and eighteen one a second proton rocket will deliver a rover named pastor after landing it will then begin three single life on mars this includes drilling two meters deep into the ground that's around six and a half feet to collect samples the mission's other objective is to study mars a service to find out what dangers there may be for future manned missions powerful dust storms extreme temperatures radiation and so on are not exactly your ideal working conditions the european space agency has already invested over four hundred million euro into the project which was initially supposed to be conducted with nasa but it backed out due to financial constraints russia on the other hand was

happy to jump in and the science providing delivery vehicles including the a landing pod will also develop some of these scientific equipment so far the red planet has only been visited by soviet and us vehicles eggs on mars will be europe's first visit to the red planet the skin of our teeth. to bring us up to date for the moment coming up we head to our washington studio for a break in the set with host abby martin that's next naughty and i'll be back with more news with the team in about thirty five minutes with. a un investigator ben emmerson has decided to not let the sins of the recent past

go he's demanding that the u.s. government release documents about the cia's program for addition and secret detention of suspected terrorists everson believes that there is now credible evidence that shows that cia black sites were used to extradite suspected terrorists with neither charges nor access to a lawyer you know nothing says protect a democracy like snagging people in foreign countries without even charging them with a crime this year investigator may have good intentions but the thing is that no matter how much he and his u.n. pals urge the u.s. to prosecute officials connected with torture or expose classified information they really have no power to do anything if you haven't noticed the u.n. is very happy to section and punish certain countries birdie if you out there naive enough to think that they'll sanction the usa or send a peacekeeping mission to stop the human rights violators in washington not a chance the un really has no business meddling in the affairs of sovereign countries but they do it all the time but there is a zero percent chance that the un will stand up to the bad behavior from the us

government no matter how much it's investigators whine and plead and beg but that's just my opinion. to live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous bad luck i got so many i mean at ten pounds i know that i'm seeing the same thing really messed up. in the old story so personally. it's a little worse if you're going through the white house or the. radio guy and politico minestrone probably want to close for about a good cause you've never seen anything like good times roll.

call most thousands that is so i mean martin and this is breaking the set so if you watch the show yesterday you know that i covered the case of c'mon and gray the sixteen year old african-american male who was shot dead in brooklyn this past weekend that undercover cops for the last three nights have been massive protests in brooklyn where community residents are outraged at what they call this another case of police brutality an injustice that will likely see no accountability last night what started as a peaceful candlelight vigil and it was a brutal clash between protesters and militarized riot police where there were reports of harassment and beatings and even with the arrests of forty seven people . now i certainly don't condone vandalism or provoking police but people are pissed and understandably so when you see injustices like what happened to trayvon martin or incremental programs like stop and frisk it's hard to not stand up.