WASHINGTON/MIAMI, Apr 26: As detainees at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, press ahead with a widening hunger strike nearly three months old, President Barack Obama has come under increasing criticism for his policy of force-feeding them.
But US law is on his side, an analysis of court rulings shows.
Most US judges who have examined forced feeding in prisons have concluded that the measure may violate the rights of inmates to control their own bodies and to privacy – rights rooted in the US Constitution and in common law. But they have found that the needs of operating a prison are more important.
Courts generally view a prison hunger strike as a suicide attempt, and they have ruled wardens have authority to stop suicide attempts as part of their mandate to preserve order.
“If prisoners were allowed to kill themselves, prisons would find it even more difficult than they do to maintain discipline, because of the effect of a suicide in agitating the other prisoners,” Judge Richard Posner wrote for a Chicago-based appeals court in 2006 in a case involving a Wisconsin prison that punished a disobedient inmate by refusing him food.
As of Thursday, 94 of the 166 prisoners were on a hunger strike in Guantanamo, meaning they had refused at least nine consecutive meals. According to a military count, 17 had lost enough weight to be force-fed liquid meals through a nasogastric tube, and three were in the hospital for observation.
Army Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House, a spokesman for the detention camp, said none of the detainees in the hospital had a life-threatening condition.
Striking inmates began refusing to eat around early February, alleging rough handling of the Koran during searches for contraband and protesting their prolonged imprisonment. General John Kelly, head of US military forces in Latin America, said assertions about the Koran were untrue.
OPPOSITION VOICED
A New York Times opinion piece last week by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni man detained at Guantanamo since 2002, launched debate over the forced feedings. Like others there, he was captured abroad on suspicion of supporting terrorism.
“I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way,” Moqbel said in the op-ed dictated through an interpreter to his lawyers.
As described by Guantanamo officials, a feeding tube is lubricated and inserted through the nose down to the stomach for the two hours it takes liquid food to pass through. In general, hunger strikers continue to drink water.
Human rights advocates and many doctors decry forced feeding of hunger strikers as a violation of personal liberty and medical ethics with risks of medical complications such as discomfort, bleeding, nausea and throat sores. The 65-year-old World Medical Association, made up of 100 national medical associations, has said it is unethical and never justified to force-feed a mentally competent adult.
Carlos Warner, a federal public defender who represents 11 Guantanamo detainees, including Kuwaiti hunger striker Faiz al Kandari, said detainee lawyers are split on the issue.
Some “have a clear position that the government should not be force-feeding,” and have unsuccessfully made their argument in federal court in Washington, DC, Warner said. “Other lawyers are of the opinion that their clients should not die of hunger before we have a chance to free them.”
The Constitution Project, a US legal group that includes Democrats and Republicans, said last week that forced feeding at Guantanamo “is a form of abuse and must end.”
George Annas, a Boston University professor of health law who opposes the forced feeding of hunger strikers on medical ethics grounds, said US law is “very permissive” of the practice. He described the attitude of American prisons as: “Do we care about indignity? No, you’re a prisoner, we’ll treat you the way we want.”
(agencies)
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