Pentagon endorses force-feeding hunger strikers

[Judi Lynn]

Pentagon endorses force-feeding hunger strikers

Tuesday June 6, 2006


WASHINGTON - A Pentagon document setting rules for medical professionals in detainee operations endorses force-feeding hunger strikers, a practice criticised by rights activists, US officials said today.
(snip)

Authorities at Guantanamo have said they have strapped some detainees into "restraint chairs" during involuntary feeding and isolated them after determining some had been purposely vomiting the liquid they had been fed. A senior general told reporters some detainees subsequently decided taking part in the hunger strike had become "too much of a hassle." Writing in March in the British medical journal The Lancet, 263 doctors from seven countries called on the United States to stop force-feeding detainees and using restraint chairs.

"It seems like the motive (for force-feeding detainees) is to prevent embarrassment to the United States government because they don't appear to be waiting until someone's life or health is in significant danger," said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of the group Physicians for Human Rights.

Detainees' lawyers have previously accused the military of violently shoving tubes through the men's noses and into their stomachs without anesthesia or sedatives and then hurling religious taunts at them when they vomited blood.
(snip/...)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10385182

[Benhurst]

1. Gosh, the Pentagon acting like fascists. Hard to believe. NT

[AlamoDemoc]

2. in due time they will run out of feeding tubes...and prisoners too

...and there after there'll be questions of who done it, why we didn't hear about this before

on edit: so far there are 208 known prisoners who are on hunger strike...and that's the military count

[Supersedeas]

3. can they announce the hunger strikes are over now?? Now that they are

force feeding those who are uncharged with no avenue for an indepedent third party arbiter to hear their side of the story.

Accusation of enemy combatant are enough to justify indefinite detention and forced feeding--so goes the policy of the Bush Regime.

[zann725]

4. Wasn't that originally done to Suffragettes...who starved defending right

to Vote...for Democracy? And "force feeding" (unless they've found a more advanced technique) is NOT a "pretty" process.

Isn't it ironic...these prisoners are also starving for lack of Democracy, Freedoms...different "stage," different era, different "players"...same theme. When the only statement one can make of one's Democractic "imprisonment," "punishment"...is to starve one's self to death to draw the world's attention to it.