"You will have to live with what you have done and not done here for the rest of your life!"

[KoKo]

Last edited Fri May 31, 2013, 10:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Gitmo Hunger Strikers to Military Doctors: Stop Contributing to Abuse



In an open letter to medical professionals at Guantanamo, hunger striking detainees make plea for justice



A group of Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike for over 100 days has issued a letter to the military doctors at the detention center urging them to allow the prisoners to receive access to independent medical professionals and "to stop actively contributing to the abusive conditions" forced upon them.

Letter Reads:

"I do not wish to die, but I am prepared to run the risk that I may end up doing so, because I am protesting the fact that I have been locked up for more than a decade, without a trial, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and denied access to justice.""Your response to my carefully considered decision [to go on hunger strike] cannot logically lead to the conclusion that your only goal is to save my life--your actions over recent months do not support such an inference," they write, and describe the brutal conditions those inmates who are being force-fed are subjected to. By contributing to these conditions, the military doctors have violated medical ethics set by the American Medical Association and the World Medical Association, and their actions have been condemned by the United Nations.

----------------

A document recently obtained by Al Jazeera detailed the brutality of the force-feedings of some of the hunger strikers and showed how the medical professionals at Guantanamo were not acting with medical independence.

"You will have to live with what you have done and not done here at Guantanamo for the rest of your life."The news agency asked Leonard Rubenstein, a lawyer at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, to review the Standard Operating Procudure for force-feeding laid out in the document, and his responses paralled the claims made by the prisoners in their open letter.

"It is a very frightening idea that the medical staff is an adjunct of the security force," Rubenstein said.

"The clinical judgment of a doctor or a nurse is basically trumped by this policy and protocol," he continued. "Doctors are not acting with the kind of professional medical independence. It's clear that notwithstanding references to preservation of detainee health in the policy the first interest is in ending the protests."

Guantanamo officials said this month that 102 detainees were on hunger strike, though lawyers for the detainees have said the number is likely 130 to 140 of the 166 prisoners.

President Obama's foreign policy speech last week "failed to provide any meaningful assistance to the hunger-striking detainees being held without charge at Guantanamo Bay," UK-based charity Reprieve said.

More with Links verifying at:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/31-5

[FirstLight]

1. ...shameful...

this is not Bush - this is Our Government as a whole - who perpetuates the belief system that the US is above the Law

sickening, and our POUTS swore he'd close it back in 2008, right?

ya, how about he gives back that Nobel Peace Prize now?

[KoKo]

2. Gitmo Torture Continuing get's very little interest here on DU these days

Sad ...because DU'ers worked so hard to expose the what Bush Administration was doing in Iraq and Torture in Gitmo.

Seems that these Detainees ...many of whom should have been released years ago being force fed with tubes down their throat...(many of the tubes don't fit) and forced to LIVE AGAINST THEIR WILL...because they have NO HOPE is no longer an issue on a Democratic Website.

They have been abandoned.. WHY IS THAT?

[riverwalker]

3. these "physicians"

should lose their licenses and be forbidden from practicing medicine ever again, anywhere. Every hospital, every nurse, every lab tech should refuse to recognose these assholes as "physicians" and if the AMA won't discredit them, then other professionals should.
Edited to ad, for ethical reasons I would refuse to accept an order from these fuckers and would fight it to the end. These bastards would be wise to remember that long after Gitmo closes, they will still want to "practice". Good luck with that, assholes.

[riderinthestorm]

4. This story should have 100k recs from DUers. Its important on a global scale.

A sad K&R....

[uppityperson]

5. Do you have a link for that, I'd like to read the whole thing. Shut Gitmo down now. Thanks

[KoKo]

6. Oh...Sorry ...here's link and it's been added to OP..Thanks!

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/31-5

And there are more links embedded in the article verifying.

[uppityperson]

7. To first do no harm is prime. Sometimes letting someone die when they want to is doing the

least amount of harm to the individual. And the individual needs to have priority vs the system. Thanks for the link, will read as my glitchy internet will download. I keep hearing about this, would like to read more.

[Luminous Animal]

9. They don't want to die. They want justice though they may die in the attempt.

[KoKo]

10. Being force-fed means you've lost control over your body...it's inhumane...it's

torture. Many of these have been cleared of any wrong doing. Yet, now they are being force-fed to keep them alive because PBO doesn't want them to die on his watch.

They will eventually die because there are health implications from long periods of force feeding. They are strapped down... This is torture. To lose control of your life...your body.

[uppityperson]

12. I understand. Letting someone die, not interfering, is a difficult choice for health care

providers. Whether a case like this, or someone refusing lifesaving treatment otherwise. For the health care provider, the "do no harm" bit sometimes means letting a person have personal autonomy and letting them risk their life.

Since the OP is about the doctors and other medical staff, I am talking about them. But I agree, the prisoners are looking for justice, though they may die in the attempt and they should have the autonomy to do this.

[KoKo]

17. Does one have a right to die if they are imprisoned with no hope of release even

if they are innocent and considered innocent by the very people who have incarcerated them and held them for years without recourse because the Govt of US says that they have no place to release them...because their own countries don't want them (so our Govt. says) but...they are worn out and subjected to torture by being force fed because our Govt. doesn't want the scandal of them dying on our President's watch.

What a hopeless situation they are under. It's just wrong and it's torture ...same as Bush did. Sticking tubes down detainees throats and restraining them to force the food through tubes that often aren't appropriate size and the gasping and gagging that these detainees feel is probably similar to the effect of Waterboarding...but for a longer period.

I didn't think this would have to be on my taxpayer and USA Citizens conscience that this kind of think would be going on under a DEMOCRATIC President that I voted Twice for...with hope that his Second Administration would be different from his First...because he could finally rid himself of the Bush Legacy in Term II...but he seems to be digging down and repeating some of the horrors we lived through under Bush.

I just don't understand why there isn't more of an outcry about this.

[uppityperson]

18. Of course they have the right and no, it is not like waterboarding. ETA

It is bad enough that there is not a need to make exaggerated claims. It is bad enough to not have to do that.

And you do realize that congress is the one to blame for keeping Gitmo open, right?


ETA, after reading the other link you gave elsewhere in the thread, following through to aljazeera's posting of protocols, the size tube they use is on the small end. If they were in a hospital or other medical facility here in the states, a larger tube would be traditionally used. I am in no way defending what they are doing, but trying to say there is no need to exaggerate as what they are doing is awful enough. I am trying to give some info on tube size and what ng tube feedings entail as I've done a fair amount during my nursing career. And no, I would not do what they are doing or support it in any way. Just trying to pass on info since it isn't common knowledge. And saying they are wrong and Gitmo should be closed now.

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. Look at what they do in our name.

Disgusting. Disgraceful.

[KG]

11. US - just another stinking torture state

so much change, I can't hardly stand it...

[riderinthestorm]

13. Saturday pm kick! Too important to drop... nt

[Cleita]

14. Until the Bush/Cheney administration are brought up for investigation for

war crimes and trials for those crimes, these abuses will continue and no one will be punished. It has to start at the beginning.

[KoKo]

15. That's what worries me...it could be Decades and the Memory will be diffused...

That this Torture at GITMO is going on under a Dem President who is Force Feeding with Tubes and Restraints Detainees in the Gitmo of Bush/Cheney...This President who RAN and was Voted For because he promised to CLOSE GITMO ...is now Authorizing Force Feedings of Prisoners who have been "Cleared of Wrong Doing" but US can't find any place to release them? It's beyond comprehension how this can be...and our Administration doesn't give any answers...

WHY? HOW? The TORTURE CONTINUES...and PBO wants to FORCE FEED with TUBES and RESTRAINTS...so they DO NOT DIE ON HIS WATCH?

[KoKo]

16. UN Calls it Torture..but US SAYS "We are Not Bound by Global Rules!"

US says it is not bound by global rules on GITMO forced-feeding
Geoffrey Cowley, @geoffreycowley
10:06 PM on 05/21/2013

During the Bush years, the UN Human Rights Council assigned a team of independent experts to determine whether the Gitmo detainees were being treated humanely. The administration denied their requests to interview the prisoners privately. But from photos, videos and the testimony of witnesses, the experts concluded that the camp’s forced feedings and other practices amounted to torture.

Seven years after reaching that bleak conclusion, the UN representatives are still voicing dismay. In a statement released May 1, they again called on the U.S. government to renounce “forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike.” They also reiterated their longstanding request to “be allowed to visit the Guantánamo detention center and to hold private, confidential interviews with the detainees as soon as possible.”

A new medical protocol

The Obama administration isn’t budging on either issue. It refused even to release the camp’s current protocol for force-feeding when researchers from the Harvard Humanitarian Institute asked to review it. But Al Jazeera got hold of the protocol independently last week, and published the full text online. Unlike the protocol used by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, this one says nothing about deferring to the “sound medical judgment by the physician responsible for medical care.” And though it’s based on the Bush administration’s 2005 force-feeding protocol (which the ACLU secured in heavily censored form through the Freedom of Information Act), it is, if anything, harsher.

Under the Bush protocol, the camp’s chief medical officer was the only one authorized to declare someone a hunger striker. The Obama version transfers that authority to the base commander. And whereas the Bush protocol called for “every effort … to allow detainees to remain autonomous” while refusing food, the Obama protocol never uses that word.

The new document does include detailed instructions for masking and shackling a hunger striker, and for denying him any say in the concentration of his feeding fluid or the rate at which it is pumped down his nose. If the detainee begs to speak with a doctor, the nurse is to answer, “I will write a note in your chart for the doctor.” And if he vomits at the end of the ordeal, he must be forced back into the feeding chair.

This, from the administration that promised to “restore that sense that America is a shining beacon on a hill.”

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/21/obama-defends-his-guantanamo-crackdown/

[KoKo]

19. Still Going On...Torture was on Bushies Hands...now Moved On onto All OF US!