Have You Ever Tried to Force-Feed a Captured Human?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/have-you-ever-tried-to-force-feed-a-captured-human/275507/



Another hunger strike is happening in the detention camp at the Guantánamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba. It currently involves around 100 people, 23 of whom are being force-fed by Naval medics as a matter of "suicide prevention." Extra medics were flown in earlier this week for this purpose.

The hunger strike led President Obama to bring Guantánamo back into the national spotlight at a press conference on Tuesday. He called the current situation at the base "unnecessary and unsustainable," but did not lay out a timetable for definitive action. What's happening now, though, could compel it.

An understanding of what it means to be force-fed is important in the discussion of the morality surrounding this, and why it is unsustainable. Carol Rosenberg at The Miami Herald -- where they have a daily Hunger Strike Tracker -- described the feedings vividly on Morning Edition yesterday: "Twice a day, if you're designated for what they call tube-feeding, you are shackled at the wrists and ankles to a chair, and a corpsman, a Navy medic, snakes a tube up your nose, down the back of your throat, into your stomach, and pumps a can of Ensure [a high-protein nutritional supplement] inside."


Feeding tubes and high-nutrition shakes used to force-feed detainees on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay (AP / Brennan Linsley)

[dipsydoodle]

1. Meanwhile

The UN human rights office has condemned force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, calling it ‘torture’ and a breach of international law. At least 21 inmates out of the 100 officially on strike are being force-fed through nasal tubes.

"If it's perceived as torture or inhuman treatment -- and it's the case, it's painful -- then it is prohibited by international law," said Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, AFP reported.

The UN bases its position on that of the World Medical Association, which consists of 102 nations including the United States, Coville explained. The international organization, a watchdog for ethics in healthcare, said back in 1991 that forcible feeding is "a form of inhuman treatment" and “never ethnically 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.

According to the WMA’s 1975 declaration, artificial feeding methods should never be used without a prisoner's permission.

http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-prison-torture-un-677/

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Before the nasogastric tube, imprisoned suffragettes were forcefed and

had their clenched teeth broken in the process.

There is no humane way to forcefeed a captured human.

[enough]

3. There is a harrowing scene of forcefeeding in the movie "Iron Jawed Angels,"

which is about women suffragists in the US. After seeing this, I can never think of force-feeding as anything but torture.

Link to YouTube video of part of the scene (but WARNING VERY DISTURBING):

[Nye Bevan]

4. I don't think the hunger strikers should be force-fed.

Even under Margaret Thatcher, the imprisoned IRA terrorists who went on hunger strikes were not force fed.

[lame54]

5. Give me liberty or give me Ensure...

Obama can't afford to have them martyred like Bobby Sands

[Newest Reality]

6. It is so strange

to live within the what may be the most powerful rogue state ever.

Does it continue merely on the premise of distraction and denial or does the horror show we see only make us uncomfortable enough to gesture and wince while, somewhere in the dusty attic of our minds we shudder in a dark corner hoping that the show is not prophetic concerning our own futures.

[gopiscrap]

7. Wow

the US is fucked up...I feel sorry for the poor US souls who are captured in a hostile action by enemy combantants

[ileus]

8. No...hell I've never captured a human

I have tested a bunch of nut pumps in my life.