US Gitmo detainees to be force fed under newly released standards
13 March 2014, 12:35 -- New US Guantanamo Bay prison guidelines issued by the Obama's administration describe hunger striking detainees as undergoing 'long term non-religious fasting'. The title of the new standard operating procedure, 'Medical Management of Detainees with Weight Loss', replaces 'Medical Management of Detainees on Hunger Strike' from March 2013.
Two US military officials who did not wish to be named said the change in the rules' terminology helps differentiate between detainees with medical conditions caused by malnourishment, and political protesters who were at or above their normal bodyweight.
The change follows headline-grabbing hunger strikes by detainees held last year which drew renewed attention to US President Barack Obama's frustrated efforts to shutter the facility on a US military base in Cuba.
The previous guidelines mentioned 'hunger strikes' frequently, but the new ones totally exclude the term and only makes one passing reference to the word hunger.
'It's not our job to feed into their political protests. It is our job to protect their health and keep them safe,' one US military official said.
'And the new (Standard Operating Procedure) gives us a much better focus on which detainees are actually at medical risk.'
The US military decided last year to stop detailing how many of its 155 detainees at Guantanamo Bay are refusing to be fed.
A US appeals court in February declined to halt the forced feeding of hunger strikers in Guantanamo Bay but ruled that the prisoners have the right to sue over the procedure and other aspects of how the US military treats them.
While the Pentagon calls force-feeding a 'medical response to [Guantanamo] detainees who hunger strike,' according to a March 2013 Joint Task Force Guantanamo memo, the American Medical Association and the World Medical Association oppose the practice as a violation of medical ethics. Initially aimed at keeping hunger strikers alive, the procedure involves feeding them liquid meals via tubes inserted into their noses and down into their stomachs.
The US military has defended the new practice as has the US president Obama, when he said at a news conference last year that he did not want those individuals to die.
Gitmo prisoner files lawsuit against Guantanamo prison and Barack Obama
A Yemeni inmate at Guantanamo Bay is taking on the military's practice of force-feeding hunger strike participants. Emad Abdullah Hassan, who has reportedly been on a continuous hunger strike since 2007, filed suit Tuesday against President Obama, alleging that the force-feeding he and fellow inmates had endured was 'inhumane.'
Emad Abdullah Hassan, a Yemeni inmate at Guantanamo Bay, introduced a historic lawsuit against the US military prison's force-feeding of detainees on hunger strikes.
By his lawyers' reckoning, Hassan has been force-fed more than 5,000 times during that period, in conditions they allege are abusive, illegal under international law, and a form of torture. The motion calls for a preliminary injunction that would put an immediate halt on the practice pending full review.
The legal move is the first of its kind to be brought before the civilian courts following last month's decision by a federal appeals court to allow such a challenge to go ahead. It paves the way for the first comprehensive hearing in the US judicial system over the legality and propriety of the military's controversial use of force-feeding at Guantánamo.
'All I want is what President Obama promised - my liberty, and fair treatment for others,' Hassan, who has been held without trial since the age of 22, said in a statement. 'This is not a life worth living, it is a life of constant pain and suffering. While I do not want to die, it is surely my right to protest peacefully without being degraded and abused every day.'
Voice of Russia, USA Today
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