Tasting Torture: Gandhi at Gitmo

Torture continues at Gitmo. Kidnapped people held by the USA at Guantanamo Bay are still held in bad conditions. These so-called "detainees" are held indefinitely without charge. Some are tortured. Food is actually forced down their throats.

Active torture exists: where a detainee refuses to eat on command, they are bound & force fed. They're hogtied, a tube is painfully thrust up their nose & down their throat, a 'meal' is forced into them "for their own best interests."

This type of torture has been specifically forbidden by the World Medical Association (1975 Declaration of Tokyo; 1991 Declaration of Malta). The medical profession (the American Medical Association is a signatory) is specific (Malta, Art. 21): "Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment."

Doctors from around the world have condemned US mistreatment through force-feeding; 263 doctors signed a 2006 letter to The Lancet urging the USA to abandon these procedures.

Visualize skinny Gandhi, bound in a Gitmo five-point restraint chair, half clad in USA Gitmo orange, his hunger strike and human dignity forced to nothing by torturous tube-feeding. Force-feeding must stop now!