Guantanamo Hunger Strike: Doctors, Nurses Made to Brutally Force-Feedings On Prisoners
A 61 cm or longer tube is snaked through the nose while Guantanamo Bay's hunger-striking prisoners are restrained by their hands and feet in a chair.
A new document obtained by Al Jazeera English's Jason Leopold details the horrifying process of force-feeding prisoners who have been striking over the last several months.
The document lays out the brutal and dehumanizing "chair restraint system clinical protocol." Doctors and nurses are ordered to be "adjuncts to the security apparatus," which means that their medical responsibility in managing the well-being of the prisoner is secondary to the force-feeding.
The 30-page manual states that nurses and doctors are essentially on hand to carry out the military policy. These force-feedings are carried out by these medical professionals regardless of whether the prisoner grants consent.
American Medical Association president Dr. Jeremy Lazarus described the policy Guantanamo as violating "core ethical values of the medical profession,” in a letter sent to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel last month. The United Nations has also classified force-feedings as a form of torture.
"Just as battlefield tactics must change throughout the course of a conflict, the medical responses to GTMO detainees who hunger strike has evolved with time," says the document which is a Standard Operating Procedure. "A mass hunger strike was successfully dealt with in [2005] by utilising procedures adopted from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the approach delineated in this SOP."
Here's the document in full:
http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/05/201358152317954140.html
Medical Management of Detainees on Hunger Strike
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Contributed by: Mohammed Haddad, Al Jazeera English
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