By: Darrian Stacy
“I know the politics are hard, but history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to end it. Imagine a future — 10 years from now or 20 years from now — when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike… Is this who we are? Is that something our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.” ~ President Barack Obama (May 2013)
Near spring’s end, President Obama foreshadowed an issue that will prove to be a defining aspect of his administration and his legacy. The “current situation” he described at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is one that is severely understated; it is in fact a crisis which involves a six month hunger strike, two-thirds of the detainees in Guantanamo, and procedures decried as torture by international observers. The hunger strike was initiated by inmates back in February who feel that they are being unlawfully detained, in essence amounting to political speech. Of the 166 detainees imprisoned in Guantanamo, 86 have been cleared for release but sit in limbo as the Obama administration and Congress disagree about how to proceed with release or transfer.
As a result, Guantanamo inmates, most of whom have been authorized for release since 2009, have “vocalized” their concern of never being released or facing trial with their hunger strike. Interestingly enough, it is not the prisoners’ denial of due process and indefinite detention that has garnered the latest dose of public concern over Guantanamo, but rather the government’s response to hunger strikers with force-feeding that stems from it. As it seems many are content with simply taking this issue to task rather than addressing the true underlying problems with Guantanamo Bay, it is important to understand that even this situation—the force-feeding of detainees—is complex and nothing short of an ethical dilemma.
Opponents of force-feeding claim that the practice is nothing short of torture. Last month Yasiin Bey, better known as entertainer Mos Def, starred in a short video which demonstrated the force-feeding procedures used on detainees. Using Guantanamo’s leaked Standard Operating Procedure for hunger strikers, medical personnel restrained Bey and guided a tube through his nose and down his throat. In the video, Bey displays an initial expression of discomfort at the intrusive tube that is quickly replaced by one of anguish. He is shown immediately thrashing around in pain and has to be restrained further. Soon after this, Bey begs for an end to the demonstration and is shown weeping profusely. The graphic depiction only lasts a few minutes, but the full endeavor at Guantanamo usually continues from anywhere between half an hour to two hours twice per day. Many argue that this clearly highlights the cruelty detainees have been undergoing.
The argument isn’t without other points either. Bodies like the International Red Cross and the U.N. have condemned forced-feedings for violating human rights, and, in the case of the World Medical Association, for being an unethical “form of inhuman and degrading treatment.” Opponents of the practice highlight the hypocrisy of an America that is usually at the forefront of criticizing other countries for violating human rights and a President who has vehemently and repeatedly opposed the use of torture.
On the opposite side of the issue, some maintain that forcibly providing sustenance to prisoners is permissible because of a lack of concrete evidence that the practice actually amounts to torture (some even suggest that Bey, a noteworthy actor, feigned his distress in the video), a rationale that does not hold up very well on its own against the immense wave of prominent organizations and individuals that have spoken out against the practice. Paired with other arguments, however, the position is more convincing.
Legally, force-feeding seems to fall under a gray area of international law. Article three of the Geneva conventions, by which the President promised to abide by in dealing with terror suspects, prohibits cruel treatment to prisoners. But although many may call the practice torture, no authoritative international body has gone as far as to say the U.S. is breaking the law. Even U.N. officials lack credibility on the issue given its directive to force-feed Serbian Warlord Vojislav Seselj in 2006.
The most crucial counter-argument in defense of force-feeding, though, is the one perhaps easiest to understand: preservation of life. While both the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association condemn force-feeding, the alternative that they offer to the practice, one of both “respect[ing] patient autonomy” and their “informed decision” to continue a hunger strike, may lead to inmates successfully committing suicide for their cause. Without the force-feeding procedures these prisoners would likely die, a calamitous scenario that would be a tragedy for the victims and a disaster for our nation. This is precisely why the President stands by the current policy.
Thus given these two conflicting sides, and assuming that force-feeding is indeed torture, an ethical dilemma surfaces and amounts to whether or not it is moral to torture a life in order to preserve that same life. Despite already choosing a course of action, both options present a problem for President Obama and his administration. Allowing the force-feeding to continue, a practice many criticize as a cruel violation of human rights and snuffing of political speech, will preserve the lives of the hunger strikers, but only at the cost of the President amending his previous stance on torture. The President cannot, however, allow prisoners in the custody of the government to die or harm themselves either, especially with them being detained without ever having a trial.
While in focusing on this particular issue it may seem that the President must choose between hypocrisy or a miscarriage of justice, this binary is incompatible with the whole reality of the situation. In truth and in dealing with the larger institutional problems with Guantanamo Bay, the President has another, arguably more arduous, option available which is to address the concerns the prisoners are risking their lives to voice. Although it may require a great deal of effort and expenditure of political capital, addressing the real issues of the pariah status of the prisoners, congressional opposition to any action concerning Guantanamo, and the now 5-year-old broken promise to close the facility is the only true way of putting to rest this ethical dilemma and living up to that “sense of justice” that the President believes is so strong in America.
