Force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has been the U.S. military’s way to prevent deaths among hunger striking prisoners. Detainees, however, have filed a lawsuit with federal courts demanding that authorities stop the practice.
“I do not want to be force-fed. I don’t want to die either, but this is a living death here in Guantanamo,” said hunger striking detainee Shaker Aamer in a letter to his lawyer. “So if I have to risk death for principle, this is what I want to do.”
Of the 166 prisoners in the facility, 106 are on hunger strike for being indefinitely detained without charge, trial or release. Since the strikes began in February, 44 prisoners have been subjected to force-feeding.
The detainees’ lawyers are attempting to have the court to extend religious protection rights to foreign nationals technically held outside of the United States (the Guantanamo Bay detention center is located in a U.S.-controlled naval base in Cuba). Although prisoners can argue that force-feeding will violate their ability to observe the religious traditions of fasting for the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act doesn’t apply outside of U.S. borders. Lawyers, somewhat unconventionally, are using the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC ruling on freedom of speech — and its expanded definition of personhood — to overcome the problem of legal rights not extending to “nonresident aliens.”
Aamer, along with detainees Nabil Hadjarab, Ahmed Belbacha and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, filed the motion in Washington on Sunday through Reprieve, a U.K.-based organization that advocates for human rights of prisoners, and co-counsel Jon. B Eisenberg.
The motion addresses the violation of medical ethics and the inhumane deprivation to observe the Muslim fasting holiday of Ramadan. According to Reprieve, Aamer and the other detainees have been cleared for release, and federal judges have ordered that the government responds to the case by July 3, before the holiday on July 8.
“Hunger strikes are a long-known form of non-violent protest aimed at bringing attention to a cause, rather than an attempt of suicide,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of Senate Intelligence Committee in a letter to Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense, after visiting the prison with Sen. John McCain and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough June 7. “I urge you to reevaluate the force-feeding policies at Guantanamo Bay and to put in place the most humane policies possible.”
The procedure, which entails a restraining chair and a stomach tube inserted through the nose, also involves the use of a drug known as Reglan. Reglan prevents vomiting during force-feeding and increases the digestive process, but the long term effects can involve severe neurological disorders such as tardive dyskinesia, which causes abnormal, involuntary body movements.
Prisoners who have sufficiently deprived themselves of nutrients are force-fed to be kept alive, but Aamer says it “just keeps us barely alive, as a husk of a human being.”
Many detainees have been cleared for release for months, even years, without actual transfer. But last month, a ban due on prison transfers to Yemen was recently lifted by President Obama, raising hopes that Guantanamo is a step closer to being shut down.