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Dr. Gerald Thomson, a professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University and former president of the American College of Physicians

Hunger Striking at Guantanamo & the Abusive Use of Forced Feeding | The Dissenter (via theamericanbear)

The report on torture at GITMO I linked to in this post, which can also be found directly here, described this well-documented process in graphic detail:

Abusive treatment continues at Guantánamo. Though some practices, such as short-shackling, may have been officially discontinued, manipulation of light and physical abuse remain severe problems. Allegations of sexual humiliation and abuse of the Qur’an continue. Sleep deprivation in Camp Five remains a serious issue.

As recently as August 2005, Hisham Sliti, while in shackles, was severely abused during an “interrogation.” He reported that the interrogator threw a chair at him and severely injured his eye. The interrogator also threw a mini-refrigerator at him, and then MPs appeared and beat Mr. Sliti further.

In response to these abuses, prisoners began hunger strike protests in June 2005. Initially called off when camp officials negotiated with prisoners and promised to bring the camps into compliance with the Geneva Conventions, the hunger strike was reinstated in August 2005 after officials reneged on their promises. Prisoners who were designated as Prisoners Council in negotiations were put into isolation.

Prisoners on the August 2005 hunger strike made four demands:

• Release or prosecution of real charges
• Immediate release of those determined to be innocent by CSRTs
• Removal of juveniles from Camp Five
• End of religious abuse

The United States has maintained that hunger-striking prisoners received medical care, but attorneys for 21- year-old hunger-striker, Yousef Al-Shehri, described him as “visibly weak and frail,” wincing in pain from a nasal tube, and requiring the support of a “walker.” He had difficulty speaking because of lesions in his throat caused by involuntary force-feeding, administered without anesthesia. His sickening descriptions of how hunger striking prisoners are treated, with the approval of medical personnel, allege disturbing, serious abuse.

These large tubes – the thickness of a finger, he estimated – were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up the detainees’ noses and down into their stomachs. No anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure. Yousef said that he could not breath with this thick tube inserted into his nose (which was so large it caused his nostril to distend). When the tube was removed, it was even more painful, and blood came gushing out of him. He fainted, and several of the other detainees also lost consciousness. The detainees were told by the guards: “we did this on purpose to make you stop the hunger strike.” They were told that this tube would be inserted and removed twice a day, every day until the hunger strike ended. Yousef described the pain as “unbearable.”

Yousef explained that doctors were present as the Initial Reaction Force forcibly removed these [nasal gastric] tubes by placing a foot on one end of the tube and yanking the detainee’s head back by his hair, causing the tube to be painfully ejected from the detainee’s nose. When the detainees saw this happening, they begged to have the tubes remain, but the guards refused and continued to forcibly remove the tubes. Then, in front of the Guantánamo physicians – including the head of the detainee hospital – the guards took nasal gastric tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, re-inserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were re-inserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes. A person the detainees only know as “Dr. [name redacted]” stood by and watched these procedures, doing nothing to intervene.

Yousef, who was a juvenile at the time of capture, relayed that guards told him that a U.S. court had ordered the force-feeding and that was the only reason that he and other prisoners complied with the force-feeding. He was “greatly disturbed,” according to his attorneys, to find out that no such order had been given and that he had been lied to. When his attorneys tried to meet with him a second time, they were told that he had removed his nasal gastric tube and was encouraging other prisoners to do the same.

In January 2006, the military subjected over thirty prisoners to intranasal force-feeding. When several prisoners reached a life-threatening stage, the military turned to the use of an “emergency restraint chair” to immobilize prisoners during several hours of force-feeding every day. According to one prisoner’s legal challenge to this practice, the military grossly misused the emergency restraint chair:

U.S. government officials immobilized the hunger strikers’ heads by strapping them in the restraint chair, restrained their hands, inserted feeding tubes in their noses, and force fed them large bags of liquid nutrients. The account further describe hunger strikers bleeding and vomiting from these actions, and urinating and defecating on themselves because Respondents had denied them access to a bathroom.

Once the military began using the emergency restraint chair, all but three prisoners ended their hunger strike due to the pain and humiliation. The U.S. courts have not addressed the prisoners’ request to ban the use of the emergency restraint chair. In June 2006, the military acknowledged that over eighty prisoners had begun another hunger strike and at least six were swiftly subjected to force-feeding.

these actions make me ashamed to be an american citizen, even if the people they are doing this to are murderers

(via mohandasgandhi)