Inmates on a hunger strike are being force-fed by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay jail.
US authorities have tried to stem a protest at Guantanamo Bay jail by force-feeding those on the hunger strike, but the UN human rights office has declared this a breach of international law.
“If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment—and it’s the case, it’s painful—then it is prohibited by international law,” Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, told AFP.
On Tuesday, President Obama vowed to renew the push to close the controversial prison in the hopes of preventing any inmate deaths as a result of the protest.”I’ve asked my team to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively, and I’m gonna reengage with Congress,” Obama told CBS News’ Bill Plante. “It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”
In the mean time, 21 of the 100 inmates reported on strike are being force-fed through nasal tubes.
Coville explained that the UN bases its stance on force-feeding on that of the World Medical Association, a 102-nation body whose members include the United States, which is a watchdog for ethics in healthcare.In 1991 the WMA said that forcible feeding is “never ethically acceptable”.
“Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting,” it said. That WMA ruling followed a 1975 declaration that artificial feeding methods should never be used without a prisoner’s permission, and that a prisoner had the right to refuse all food if a physician considered the individual capable of “unimpaired and rational judgment” about the consequences.
The hunger strike, which is now into its 12th week, has upped the pressure on Washington to find a long-term solution that would allow for prosecuting terror suspects while shuttering Guantanamo.
Photo: AP File/Evan Vucci
““Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment.”
And yet infant male circumcision is still OK.
It is long past time for the prisoners of war to go home.