"The first coordinated large-scale mass protest at Guantánamo began on February 27, 2002 when prisoners initiated a rolling hunger strike. This hunger strike appears to have started when an MP removed a homemade turban from a prisoner during his prayer. As the hunger strike expanded to a peak of 194 participants over a two-month period, it became a protest of the prisoners’ indefinite detention without any legal process and their harsh living conditions. A spokesman for the Guantánamo Joint Task Force, Marine Captain Alan Crouch, acknowledged in a February 28, 2002 official statement that 159 prisoners refused lunch and 109 refused dinner on February 27, 2002. On February 28th, 107 refused breakfast and 194 did not eat dinner. At the beginning of the hunger strike, the military attempted to minimize the seriousness of the protest. In a prepared statement, a Joint Task Force public affairs officer, Marine Major Steve Cox, stated that “[b]y no means is this an organized, concerted effort by the camp’s detainee population, but merely a demonstration of some of the detainees’ displeasure over the uncertainty of their future.” Several days into the hunger strike, Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa, Jr., Deputy Director for Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that the detention center commander and the chaplain “have been out and around with and speaking to the detainees. The tensions have eased in their opinion.” But by mid-March, three detainees who had refused food and water for approximately fourteen days were forcibly given intravenous fluids. By this time, military officials were acknowledging that the prisoners were protesting “the fact that they don’t know what is happening to them” and that the hunger strike participants’ primary concern was “their murky future.” In early May, only two prisoners continued to participate in this hunger strike. Both men had been striking since March 1, 2002 to protest their indefinite detention. The military returned one man to Camp Delta on May 2, 2002 after force-feeding him, ending his 63-day hunger strike. The other final participant was forcibly fed through a tube inserted in his nose on May 10, 2002 after 71 days of fasting."