Tag Archives | hunger strike

Guantanamo-Style Force Feeding Occurs In U.S. Prisons Every Day

By on May 14, 2013 in News 0

force feedingVia Common Dreams, Ann Neumann on barbaric force feeding occurring onshore and offshore against prisoners who see hunger striking as their last available method of protest:

I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction.

The fact that force feedings are being discussed in the context of Guantánamo obscures the routine use of feeding tubes in American prisons. Other recent feeding tube cases have taken place in Washington state, Utah, Illinois and Wisconsin. No sweeping study of force-feeding has been done, so statistics on usage don’t exist. Only three states have laws against force-feeding prisoners: Florida, Georgia and California, where a hunger strike in 2011 at a facility in Pelican Bay effectively caused a court examination of prison conditions.

… Read the rest

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U.S. Military’s Guantanamo Bay Force Feeding Document Leaked

By on May 13, 2013 in News 0

Screen Shot 2013-05-13 at 7.54.15 PMThe brutal force feeding of hunger striking Guantanamo Bay detainees by US medical personnel has been well described in the documentary Doctors of the Dark Side, but the vivid and gruesome procedures are now confirmed in an official US military document obtained by Al-Jazeera:

Hunger striking Guantanamo prisoners who are force-fed a liquid nutritional supplement undergo a brutal and dehumanising medical procedure that requires them to wear masks over their mouths while they sit shackled in a restraint chair for as long as two hours, according to documentation obtained by Al Jazeera. The prisoners remain this way, with a 61cm – or longer – tube snaked through their nostril until a chest X-ray, or a test dose of water, confirms it has reached their stomach.

At the end of the feeding, the prisoner is removed from the restraint chair and placed into a “dry cell” with no running water.

… Read the rest

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Obama: I Want To Close Guantanamo

By on April 30, 2013 in News 0

Looks like the Guantanamo hunger strikers have caught the attention of US President Obama. From USA Today:

President Obama said Tuesday that his administration would re-engage Congress on closing the U.S. military-run detention center at Guantanamo Bay, calling the facility a “recruitment tool for extremists” and suggesting it is undermining U.S. security.

“It needs to be closed,” Obama said at a White House news conference marking the first 100 days of his second term. “I’m going to go back at this.”

Obama’s comments come as military officials say that as many 100 prisoners at Guantanamo are engaged in a hunger strike.

With the situation getting more difficult, the Pentagon in recent days dispatched 40 additional Navy medical personnel to Guantanamo to deal with the hunger strikers. They bolstered a staff of about 100, said Lt. Col. Samuel House, a base spokesman…

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Gitmo Prisoners Stage Violent Rebellion

By on April 14, 2013 in News 0

GuantanamoThe unrest at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (a/k/a Gitmo) that has seen brutal force feeding of hunger strikers exploded this weekend as detainees staged a rebellion armed with broomsticks and batons. From AP:

Months of increased tension at the Guantanamo Bay prison boiled over into a clash between guards and detainees Saturday as the military closed a communal section of the facility and moved its inmates into single cells.

The violence erupted during an early morning raid that military officials said was necessary because prisoners had covered up security cameras and windows as part of a weekslong protest and hunger strike over their indefinite confinement and conditions at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Prisoners fought guards with makeshift weapons that included broomsticks and mop handles when troops arrived to move them out of a communal wing of the section of the prison known as Camp 6, said Navy Capt.

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Occupy Hunger Strike

By on July 13, 2012 in News 15

From Rusty Shackleford over on Modern Mythology who is now, by his own report, going homeless and disappearing for a while — this being, we believe, his final report for a little while:

[I am now offering a personal call to arms to anyone in the Portland area, homeless or not, to join us in our solidarity. If you yourself do not live in Portland, but know of those who do, spread this message and tell them to bring those who are down and out and disenfranchised to us. This is OUR public property. Our tax dollars support the agenda of city hall. Tell everyone you know who is homeless in the area of Portland to come to our relief camp, where we will have food, shelter, and companionship for those who truly need it. Tell your friends. Spread this around. Let us do our best to make these council men understand that thousands of people in Portland need homes, and that for every 20 empty houses there is one homeless individual.… Read the rest

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