Haven't They Been Feeding You at Prison Camp?
The United States has now admitted that hunger strikers at Guantanamo have been force fed, usually by strapping the prisoners to restraining chairs, and, at regular intervals, shoving tubes down their throats and up their noses and pumping liquid nourishment in at belly-bursting velocities and volumes.
Not only is this treatment considered by many American gourmands too inhumane for geese; it's also absurdly hypocritical: Guantanamo officials are torturing detainees to prevent them from dying.
Maybe I am being too unsympathetic-- after all, what's wrong with a little torture to preserve peace and quiet? According to military official, the hunger strikes had to be stopped "because they were having a disruptive effect and causing stress for the medical staff."
posted by Pooja @ 10:49 PM
1 Comments:
check out the the report to be published to day by NGO Human Rights First on Deaths in US Custody and Command Responsibility. It makes for harrowing reading - 98 deaths in US costody, a third almost a direct result of torture permitted by US policy and others including homicide. Most of the documentation and evidence emanates from the Pentagon itself so there is veracity to the allegations and conclusions. It makes me very depressed - it somehow makes my work here at the ICTY redundant - I mean some of the crimes committed in the camps in the former Yugoslavia, while heinous, were arguably less egregious than the types of torture and inhumane treatment perpetrated by US army in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder if this report would make the front page of any US daily - would it?
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