Omid Safi speaks about hunger strikers at Guantanamo. Dr. Sondra Crosby looks at numbers presented by Safi on Guantanamo detainees. Photo by Katherine Scott.
As details of the treatment of U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay detention camp trickle out, a troubling pattern of ill treatment is emerging, according to experts at a recent Duke panel discussion.
Panelists at the discussion, hosted by the Kenan Institute’s Human Rights Center, focused on the treatment of hunger strikers at Guantanamo, The number of hunger strikers once reached as many as 200, but has been reduced in recent years as U.S. authorities attempt to break the strikes using methods of force-feeding that cause significant pain and push the boundaries of international law and medical ethics.
Dr. Sondra Crosby said Guantanamo officials have botched the response to hunger strikes from the start more than a decade ago, justifying the force-feeding as saving the life of prisoners they considered "suicidal."
"They are not suicidal," Crosby said, adding the treatment constitutes punishment rather than medical care. The force-feeding is done using restraint chairs that hold the prisoners' hands, legs and head in place. A feeding tube is then inserted into the nose. The painful process can take as long as four hours.
"There is no medical reason for this treatment and the doctors engaged in it are in violation of standard medical ethics," said Crosby, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. Crosby was one of the first doctors outside of the U.S. military allowed to travel to Guantanamo.
"Doctors have a responsibility to advocate for the patient," Crosby said. "If they can't, they need someone else to come in and take responsibility."
One factor limiting discussion of the topic is that most Americans believe the Guantanamo prisoners to be "among the worst of the worst." U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R.-Ark.) said in hearings this past week that he hopes all the prisoners "rot in Guantanamo."
The panelists said that attitude doesn't excuse breaking international law and engaging in torture. Crosby said most Americans don't know that a significant number of prisoners have never had any evidence presented against them that they've engaged in torture. Many have been cleared for release but remained jailed. One prisoner who was force-fed more than 1,300 times was recently released without ever being charged.
The use of hunger strikes is part of a long and little-known tradition of non-violent protests of prison and political conditions, said Julie Norman, a 2001 Duke graduate and a faculty member at McGill University.
The first were British women suffragettes at the end of the 19th century. The tactic was most famously used in Northern Ireland but also has been seen in Turkey, South Africa, India and elsewhere.
The hunger strikers' motives are rarely to get release; more often it's to change prison policy or bring attention to political issues, Norman said. At Guantanamo, the strikers are often demanding treatment in accordance with the Geneva Accords.
The use of force-feeding to break hunger strikes falls in a "gray area" of international law, Norman said. The World Health Organization, the International Red Cross and other bodies have declared it to amount torture, while the European Court of Human Rights allowed some room for force-feeding "if the prisoner's life is in danger."
But Norman noted at Guantanamo, as with CIA Black Sites where prisoners were subjected to rectal force-feeding, the issue is not just the tactic, but also the method.
Duke Professor Omid Safi, the director of the Islamic Studies Center, said the force-feedings continue a pattern from Abu Ghraib and beyond of violating male Muslim bodies.
"The treatment at Guantanamo is not accidental," Safi said. "Through degradation, we turn adult Muslim males into 'non-persons.'"
He ended his talk with a short video of the musician Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey), who voluntarily was force-fed through the nose in the manner of Guantanamo. Bey ended the session after four minutes when the pain became too excruciating.
"Secrecy and democracy are antithetical," Safi said after the video "We must shine light on the darkest places and insist we have accountability."