Pentagon endorses force-feeding hunger strikers [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Pentagon endorses force-feeding hunger strikers

Tuesday June 6, 2006


WASHINGTON - A Pentagon document setting rules for medical professionals in detainee operations endorses force-feeding hunger strikers, a practice criticised by rights activists, US officials said today.
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Authorities at Guantanamo have said they have strapped some detainees into "restraint chairs" during involuntary feeding and isolated them after determining some had been purposely vomiting the liquid they had been fed. A senior general told reporters some detainees subsequently decided taking part in the hunger strike had become "too much of a hassle." Writing in March in the British medical journal The Lancet, 263 doctors from seven countries called on the United States to stop force-feeding detainees and using restraint chairs.

"It seems like the motive (for force-feeding detainees) is to prevent embarrassment to the United States government because they don't appear to be waiting until someone's life or health is in significant danger," said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of the group Physicians for Human Rights.

Detainees' lawyers have previously accused the military of violently shoving tubes through the men's noses and into their stomachs without anesthesia or sedatives and then hurling religious taunts at them when they vomited blood.
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10385182