Force Feeding at Gitmo

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the justifiably maligned prison system at Guantanamo Bay, thirty prisoners have gone on a hunger strike, twenty-five of whom are being force fed through tubes that are rammed up their noses while they're immobilized.  The prisoners are protesting the release of Osama bin Laden's driver from U.S. military detention.  Military brass dismiss the hunger strikes as part of an orchestrated power struggle between detainees and their guards.  But not everyone sees it that way.  Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald writes:  Washington lawyer David Remes, who represents 17 Yemenis, said some of his clients launched the latest hunger strike after Yemeni Salim Hamdan went home in November, a month shy of completion of his 66-month prison sentence.  "They've actually gone ballistic at the fact that Hamdan, who was convicted of supporting terrorism, was released and they, who have been charged with nothing, continue to languish there,'" said Remes, who met with clients before Christmas...  A military commission this summer convicted Hamdan, 40, of supporting terror for working as bin Laden's $200-a-month driver in Afghanistan until his capture in November 2001.  He was sent to the Yemeni capital Sana'a for his final month in jail -- meaning he would've had a Dec. 29 release date -- but has not yet been released...  Long-held detainees, most held without charge since early 2002, were ''elated'' that Hamdan was leaving the prison camps, Remes said.  But, ``that doesn't mitigate the perverseness of the situation.  If an ordinary detainee knew that all you had to be [was] Osama's servant to get out, a lot of them would have fabricated confessions that they were Osama's servant.''

Hunger strikes are not uncommon at Gitmo, but usually they're mounted in desperation by prisoners who would rather starve themselves to death than continue to live in inhumane conditions, without a trial and without hope of release.  From ePluribusMedia:  "Saving" prisoners from their hunger strike is a deceptive distortion of a cruel and unacceptable coercion that needs our urgent attention to bring to an immediate end.  If we dare not allow prisoners to seek death as a means of escaping their circumstance or because they want to make martyrs of themselves, and yet we cannot meet any of their demands for the promise of a fair trial or some relief from their seemingly endless imprisonment, why cannot we follow the procedures demanded by the World Medical Association?  Why?  Because during his sorry reign as our Commander-in-chief, George W. Bush and his gang of enablers have given short shrift to inconsequential things like human rights and the Geneva Convention.    

So how does one go about force feeding a prisoner?  Here's how it works.  Guards strap the hunger striker into a chair where he waits, frightened, sometimes for hours. When it's time for the "procedure" to begin they Velcro his head to a metal restraint so he can't jerk his neck.  His arms and legs are bound.  Then the guards shove a tube up the man's nose and run it down into his stomach.  Through this tube a thick liquid is pumped, providing nourishment.  If the man vomits, which often happens, the procedure is repeated.  Military guards do this twice a day, to any prisoner foolish enough to protest the already inhumane treatment he's receiving at Gitmo.