Medical teams are on their way to Guantanamo Bay to ´protect the prisoners´ against their hunger strike.
Force-feeding has been prohibited since 1975 by the Declaration of Tokyo of the World Medical Association, provided that the prisoner is "capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment" and considered it torture, but alas the US thinks differently and developed a ´feeding chair´ pictured below to force-feed.
Over a 100 prisoners are now on hunger-strike against the inhumane and endless imprisonment without due process. The president of the American Medical Association has objected and called it unethical to force-feed, but nevertheless already 21 hunger strikers are being subjected to it by military doctors.
The Army spokesman said: "I can tell you that we will not allow detainees to harm themselves, and this includes attempts at suicide – including self-induced and peer-pressured starvation to death," he said. Apparently only US military is allowed to harm the detainees, following this logic.
To quote one of the prisoners: "Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made. I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late." #Politics
typical typical typical.
:p
That make my stomach turn
well in spokane they have the right to kick down your door and commit home invasion violently at gunpoint and threaten to take you to jail without warrant/probable cause/exigent circumstances/any other particular legal threshold via fictitious 'pretext' to search. that is unless you catch them in the act on camera:
Spokane Police Department Unlawful Practices Brutally Exposed
didnt stop me from getting wrongfully evicted and then going to jail for six months (of course without a camera) and doing the same thing.
oh well, these are just some of the consequences of poverty that most folks could give a shit less about. i guaran-goddamn-tee you that i got worse beatdowns from the los angeles/spokane cops than these gitmo detainees do.
:p
Guantanamo Bay were international law stops and war crimes are not seen.
Shameful
America. Fuck yeah.
With all that is going on in and outside the US and the violations of national and international law, I wonder if we get to witness the second American Revolution in our lifetime or that the American people will accept the police state it already has become.
America say they must do this to defeat its enemies but for example here in Australia on the street the dislike towards Americans is turning to hate. Every day world wide they get an other hundred enemies.
They're obviously incapable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment, otherwise they wouldn't have been terrorists in the first place, right?
+George Cohn most of the people in Guantanamo Bay are not terrorist eg one was snatched from the street in London never been out of England after 5 year they discovered they had the wrong person he was released with 37 break to his legs and an eye burnt out. If the CIA doesnt like the way you look or your name. People murder they 3700. Guantanamo Bay = Nazi death camp
+George Cohn that's based on the assumption that all detainees are guilty.
How would you have them fight what they see as an enemy determined to conquer their people, +George Cohn?
Sorry guys, I was trying to be sarcastic by begging the question.
A disgrace.
I feel the pain 🙁
When we can intellectualize any action and find justification for it we are not really as civilized as we would like to think, or that much different from those who we say are trying to destroy us.
The worst part is that the War Crimes Tribunalbin Hauge is not recignised by the americans and ant trials against american citizens will be met by military force.
There is very little diplomatic options for the rest of the world to take.
THIS IS COMPLICATED. Does, this, then, mean the prisoners induced the torture? Knowing! they would be force-fed?, knowing that "unethical" leverage is available? What if its just a waiting game ("waiting" for them to talk) and this is a way of backing out and keeping secrets. These folks commit suicide for the cause, right? And "the cause" is our abolition, right?
+Rebecca Hinckley Many of these people have done no wrong and have no cause to die for, but when your tortured 24/7 you wish to die. Eg one case of an Australian journalist snatched off the street in Australia for ringing an Arab news paper to confirm a story. He was beaten till his skull caved in 2 years latter they admitted the had the wrong person. As an Australian I personnel find that when the CIA makes attracts on Australians on Australian soil an act of war. No wonder 2/3 of the world hates America
+Rebecca Hinckley it's not complicated. What is complicated is trying to defend it or make it sound reasonable.
+Des Lang you're making that up. Tortured? GTMO has hosted hundreds of visitors, observers, journalists. Link, or it's just hooey.
Okay, I'll admit I found this on the internet: "my cousin's hairdresser knows a Pakistani poppy farmer who was snatched by CIA operatives in Lahore and then held at Guantanamo and he wrote a diary about it on his laundry receipts: "day 220. They have continued practising witchcraft on me. They turned me into a newt. by suppertime, I got better.""
+Steven Drexler If your searching the internet in the US the censorship system will block reports
+Steven Drexler
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/04/afghanistan.usa
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/09/us-rights-usa-uighurs-sb-idUSTRE5585PZ20090609
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5285226.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301362_pf.html
And that’s only the ones I bothered to link to after 2 min of searching on "wrongful detention at gitmo".
Gitmo and the whole idea that what is going on there is not torture is just ridiculous. It doesn't matter if you call it "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" it is still torture.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-03-16/news/36836881_1_cia-prisons-secret-prisons-cia-jails
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/01/the_case_for_torture_ex_cia_officials_explain_enhanced_interrogations.html
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/003/2013/en
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/guant-namo-10-years-human-wrongs-2012-11-01
+chris vighagen Thanks, but that's not what +Des Lang is alleging. I'm willing to have the discussion about indefinite detention, but there's no evidence of torture happening in Guantanamo from any reliable sources. And all the stories you linked were from people RELEASED from Guantanamo. So…their detention wasn't, in fact, indefinite. +Des Lang receives the internet via satellite transmission through his tinfoil hat, and he has access to parts of the internet that I just can't see, I guess.
+Rebecca Hinckley has it exactly right. This is complicated. These jihadis are part of a suicide cult that glorifies death. They would be happy to die and further their cause. So the management at Guantanamo is between a rock and a hard place: let them die of starvation, or tend to their medical needs as mandated by Geneva I? [by the way, I don't think that the "Declaration of Tokyo" is binding on the US government.]
Torture is never complicated. Either you treat humans with dignity and respect or you dont.
If you don't then do not expect others to treat you better.
Don't expect the animosity towards you to decline.
I know that this is a concept that is hard to understand but the whole idea of these treaties are to enable you to be treated fairly if you are ever captured by the opposing force in a war.
Dehumanising people and mistreating them is not a great way to gain their confidence and trust.
Which by the way the FBI has come out and said a few times.
From what I have read on your profile, you are a navy man +Steven Drexler?
Dont you think that there is a value in respecting human dignity as a method of propaganda. THat the measure of how civilized our society is can be directly measured in how that civilization treats its enemies?
+chris vighagen medical feeding is controversial. It isn't torture. Agreed with you on dignity and respect: most of the inmates at Guantanamo don't deserve the respect part, but they get it. I'll say it again: there has been NO TORTURE at Guantanamo Bay.
I'll concede that the medical feeding is controversial and not torture. It does however undermine the last resort a captive has to excerpt control and influence on their situation.
As with the 1981 hunger strikes of IRA members in British prisons.
So waterboarding isn't torture?
Sleep deprivation isn't torture?
Cold Cell induced hypothermia isn't torture?
I'd say that any procedure used that requires medical doctors to be on stand by to check on prisoners health condition should be seen as torture.
Red Cross, Amnesty international and several watch dog organisations have time and time again challenged the USA on the use of SERE techniques for interrogations.
You say there has been no torture at Gitmo, okay perhaps that is true, I personally do not believe you on that since the evidence of the contrary is quite overwhelming.
Though abuse has occurred there
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/national/nationalspecial3/01gitmo.html?_r=0
But even so that does not mean that the US does not use torture. As demonstrated below…
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100607/full/news.2010.284.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/06/07/a-q-amp-a-on-psychologists-and-torture/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/06/07/on-psychologists-and-torture/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index_ig.htm
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/01/130401fa_fact_coll
Federation American Scientists have quite a lot on this
http://www.fas.org/pubs/index.html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL32276.pdf
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/05/050704.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/taguba.pdf (Leaked Secret report on the issue of Abu Gharib not Gitmo)
Transcripts of a senate hearing on torture
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2009_hr/wrong.html
Transcriptions of the Maher Arar hearing
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/arar.pdf
A book on the history of interrogations that begin in the earliest of recorded history and also details the School of Americas and the KUBARAK manuals. (Very interesting I recommend it) http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
A nice run-through of Enhanced Interrogation methods and their effects
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/07801-etn-leave-no-marks.pdf
Right I have a few more links but I think I have made my point that even if you say that there is no torture at Gitmo, or that the US have never done torture at Gitmo. The historic evidence on the US history of mistreatment of prisoners and the persistent cover up of such mistreatment pose very thin ice to walk on.
And even if the CIA secret prisons didn't exist, which they still do, the US have a history of turning over prissoners and kidnapped individuals to regimes such as Syria for a period of time to help extract information.
It places you as a defender of Gitmo in somewhat a precarious position that you have the burden of proof since at the moment the rest of us just don't believe you as the historic evidence works against you.
It´s considered comparable to torture by the convention of Tokyo +Steven Drexler
Don´t forget that if the prisoners cooperate they get nice, thin tubes, but if not it´s a much bigger tube forced down to them which according to the victims hurts a lot.
Well, I heard that one of the detainees sprouted a second head. A grotesque, arduous, process. I'm sure you can imagine. The detainee is seeking a reward that arises from complications due to the fact that his/her internal conflicts have now become external as well. Gitmo is silent, as always. However, I hear the workers there have an inside joke; they say: s/he probably prayed for additional wisdom, and s/he shouldn't complain now.
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This will bite America's ass eventually.