The Guantanamo experiment: Letter from detainee on Gitmo’s 12th year

[unhappycamper]

http://yementimes.com/en/1746/opinion/3346/The-Guantanamo-experiment-Letter-from-detainee-on-Gitmo%E2%80%99s-12th-year.htm

The Guantanamo experiment: Letter from detainee on Gitmo’s 12th year
Published on 14 January 2014 in Opinion

Here we are in Guantánamo as we come to the 12th anniversary of this terrible place. The treatment here is often described by the public relations officer as next door to perfect. Indeed, now I am into my seventh year of being force fed, it’s quite a Club Med holiday camp!

We heard some good news about President Obama wanting to send people home, but we do not want to hang our hopes on it. Hope is like a mirage—you can see it but can’t touch it.

It does not really need to be said, but it is a grave violation of professional ethics for doctors to participate in torture or cruel treatment. Surely health care professionals should not condone any deliberate infliction of pain and suffering on detainees? This would seem to be a fairly basic proposition.

Yet who is better than a doctor to cause excruciating pain without damaging the body? There is a wide divergence here between the morality of a doctor’s role and the reality of his actions. It is very, very sad. When a surgeon no longer uses his scalpel to cure a disease, he becomes no better than a butcher.