A new report published by al Jazeera outlines the “US process for force-feeding hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees.”
The 30-page report, which was obtained by the news outlet from United States Southern Command which has oversight of the joint task force that operates the prison, “contains the most detailed descriptions to date pertaining to the treatment of hunger strikers and prisoners who undergo force-feedings.” These new policies went into effect on March, 5, 2013.
The guidelines are as follows:
A guard “shackles detainee and a mask is placed over the detainee’s mouth to prevent spitting and biting,” the manual says. A tube runs from the detainee’s nostril to his stomach. After the feeding process, officials put the detainee in a “dry cell”—one without running water—and monitor him for up to an hour to ensure he doesn’t vomit.
Detainees can be held in the restraint chair with the feeding tube inserted for up to two hours at a time.
Along with outlining the new procedures for force feeding, the document has guidelines for security personnel to attempt to end the overall hunger strike as well. It states, “in the event of a mass hunger strike, isolating hunger striking patients from each other is vital to prevent them from achieving solidarity.” Guards staged an early morning raid in April, clashing with prisoners, and forcing the men from their communal living spaces into single occupant cells in an attempt to destroy their sense of “solidarity.” But instead the hunger strike has grown to include over 100 of the 166 detainees being held.
Leonard Rubenstein, who is an attorney at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, reviewed the new procedural guidelines for al Jazeera, and explained that they are disturbing because they, “prohibit doctors and nurses from acting independently and make clear that they are simply ‘adjuncts of the security apparatus.'” He said:
It is a very frightening idea that the medical staff is an adjunct of the security force. The clinical judgment of a doctor or a nurse is basically trumped by this policy and protocol. Doctors are not acting with the kind of professional medical independence [they should]. It’s clear that, notwithstanding references to preservation of detainee health in the policy, the first interest is in ending the protests. What’s missing is the determination of capacity that is required by international ethical guidelines as well as responsiveness to the detainee’s needs.
The final authority to determine which prisoners are to be subjected to force-feeding is not in the hands of doctors either. In fact, the new SOP gives that power to Guantanamo’s Commander Smith. This is disturbing because, as Rubenstein points out, “it gives him complete control over a medical procedure that doctors should be responsible for.” However, according to the new guidelines the medical personnel who are conducting the feeding procedures “are on hand simply to carry out the military’s policy.”
According to official reports there are currently 29 detainees who are being force-fed at Guantanamo.
Photo: DVIDSHUB/Flickr
Read more:
UN Declares Force-Feeding Breach of International Law
If They Were Somebody. They Are Somebody.
US Navy Sends Extra Medical Staff and Specialists to Guantanamo Bay
This is so fucked up. It brings to mind the worst treatment of the suffragettes in the U.S. and the IRA prisoners in the U.K. Actually, it’s worse than that, because for all we know some of the people in Guantanamo might not actually be associated with any sort of political/terrorist movement.
(Obviously the suffragettes weren’t terrorists. They were political and a threat to the status quo, though).