Authorities at Guantánamo Bay have ceased force-feeding hunger-striking prisoners, reports Reprieve. "On September 20th, a new Senior Medical Officer stopped tube-feeding the strikers, and ended the standard practice of closely monitoring their declining health."
Medical professionals have an obligation to bring attention to the plight of the hunger strikers in Guantanámo Bay say signers to a new petition for independent medical oversight. "The moral and ethical issues may readily be resolved. Where, as here, a prisoner has been denied liberty or a fair trial for 15 years or more, most people would agree that he has a valid cause for complaint. The simple solution would be to give him justice."
Forced feeding is a hideous process employed to relieve government embarrassment over custodial death. The brutish Trump/Pence regime exhibits no such shame or compunction to release the 41 men falsely imprisoned in Guantanamo. "Not only will the detainees die as a result of their peaceful protest," notes lawyer Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, "but their deaths will spark still more anger if the military coerces them by manipulating their medical treatment. The Trump Administration must urgently allow independent medics to examine these detainees, before it's too late."
One of the men on a hunger strike is Ahmed Rabbani, a Pakistani prisoner held -- without charge or trial -- since September 2002. He has been on a hunger strike since 2013, reportedly weighs just 95 pounds, and is suffering internal bleeding. "I don't want to die," says Rabbani, "but after four years of peaceful protest I am hardly going to stop because they tell me to. I will definitely stop when President Trump frees the prisoners who have been cleared, and allows everyone else a fair trial."
