What does US accomplish by Guantanamo force feeding?

Of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, about 100 are on a hunger strike. About 20 are being force-fed, according to the New York Times. About 40 medical staff have arrived to ensure that the detainees are fed.

The men want their cases heard before a court. Many of them have been at Guantanamo for 12 years without being charged.

What are the medical ethics of force-feeding? It seems to violate the norms of informed consent and refusing burdensome treatment. The American Medical Association sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on April 25. It quoted the 1975 Tokyo Declaration of the World Medical Association which takes an umambiguous stand on the issue: "Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially".

It is not clear how many doctors, if any, are involved in the force-feeding.

However, President Obama has ignored the niceties of medical ethics for the hunger strikers. He simply told the media, "I don't want these individuals to die." Politically it is impossible to release the detainees; legally it is hard to try them. So they remain in limbo, frustrated and angry.

The military has not released much information about the force-feeding regimen. But in The Daily Beast, infectious diseases expert Kent Sepkowitz, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, makes it sound excruciating:

"Without question, it is the most painful procedure doctors routinely inflict on conscious patients. The nose--as anyone knows who ever has received a stinger from an errant baseball--has countless pain fibers. Some patients may scream and gasp as the tube is introduced; the tear ducts well up and overflow; the urge to sneeze or cough or vomit is often uncontrollable... The procedure is, in a word, barbaric. And that's when we are trying to be nice."

However, he also is unsure what is to be done.

"In this debate individual doctors are stuck at a crossroads of unusual complexity. Sworn to alleviate pain and prevent death where possible, we also are sworn to respect the wishes of the individual. For us, there is no simple way out. Though sharing some similarities, the situation is distinct from respecting the wishes of a patient dying from an untreatable illness--starvation has a remedy."

From here.

Related reading:  Yemen detainee dead at Guantanamo; Obama signs order to close Guantanamo (What happened with that?); Amid hunger strikes Obama renews effort to close Cuba prison

News Briefs

INDIA, July 7:  Hindustan Times: ART in India Could Lead to Child Abuse
Single men, women and even gays and lesbians could soon get the legal sanction to have children using surrogate mothers. The draft Bill legalising surrogacy in India — the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) [Regulation] Bill 2010 — has provided for single parenthood by allowing “unmarried couples” and “single persons” from India and abroad to have children using ART procedure and surrogate mothers.The Bill, with potential to rewrite the social landscape, may be tabled in the monsoon session of Parliament if the Union Cabinet clears it.

“Along with the term single persons, the path is open for gays and lesbians to use ART procedure,” said senior advocate Rajiv Dhavan, who played a crucial role in drafting the Bill along with his colleagues at Public Interest Legal Support and Research Centre. “The expression ‘unmarried couples’ generally suggests heterosexual relationships. But its interpretation has been left open.”

NEW YORK, July 7: The New York Daily News: CNN fires Octavia Nasr for Twitter post
Less than 140 characters cost CNN's Octavia Nasr her job after she tweeted her "respect" for a terror-loving Hezbollah sheikh who died over the weekend.

Nasr, CNN's Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs, ran into hot water after she posted on Twitter that she was "sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."
 
HAVANA, July 7: Al Jezeera:  Cuba to Free 52 Dissidents
Cuba's Catholic church has said that the Cuban government will free 52 political prisoners in a major concession to international pressure to improve its human rights.

The church said in a statement on Wednesday that five of the prisoners would be released later during the day and allowed to go to Spain, while the remaining 47 would be freed over the next few months.

Justice for Guantanamo Detainees and their Victims

Professor David Luban (Georgetown University Law Center) addressed a conference on the American legal profession sponsored by Stanford University in March of 2008. His expanded views were published under the title “Lawfare and Legal Ethics in Guantánamo” in the Stanford Law Review.

David Luban

From this reading, it is clear that David Luban’s sympathies lie with the defense counsel, who in his thinking are the only legal practitioners seeking justice for the accused terrorists. He does not credit the government counsel equally, though these are seeking justice also, but a justice that includes the victims.

Luban identifies the defense counsel as standing heroically against the all-powerful state, the “Leviathan” of Thomas Hobbes’ conception. But does Luban’s Leviathan view actually stand up before the facts?

Not really. The government dedicated twenty-nine attorneys to the defense of detainees at Guantánamo. With just twenty detainees charged with crimes, this resulted in the government supplying 1.45 defense attorneys per detainee facing a military commission.

Read a full response to Luban’s criticism of US Military Justice in the war on terror here.

Cuba Eyed as Russian Refueling Stop

Moscow: Russia may start regular flights by long-range bombers to Cuba in response to US plans to build missile defence sites in Eastern Europe, the newspaper Izvestia reported Monday, quoting an official.

"Such discussions exist," the unidentified senior Russian air force official was quoted as saying, adding that the measure would be a response to the United States "deploying missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic."

It was not clear whether he meant permanently basing the bombers in Cuba or using the island as a refuelling stop, but former top defence ministry official Leonid Ivashov told the newspaper that Cuba was best used for brief stopovers.

Cuba should be used "not as a permanent base -- this is unnecessary -- but as a stopover airfield, a refuelling stop," Ivashov was quoted as saying.

Spokesmen for the air force and the defence ministry declined to comment about the report to AFP.

Starting long-range bomber flights to Cuba would signal a reawakening of military cooperation by former Cold War allies Moscow and Havana. In 2002 Russia closed its last military base on the island, a radar base at Lourdes.

Plans to fly long-range bombers to Cuba "would be a good answer to attempts to place NATO bases new Russia's borders," former top air force commander Pyotr Deinekin told the RIA Novosti news agency in response to the Izvestia report.

In a speech last year, then president Vladimir Putin likened the US missile defence dispute to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, though he added that relations between Moscow and Washington "have changed a lot" since then.

Read it all here.

Putin Seeks Renewed Alliance with Cuba

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said it was time for Russia to rebuild links with former Cold War ally Cuba, news agencies reported.

The Kremlin is angry at U.S. plans for a missile defence system in Eastern Europe, and last month a news report suggested Russia might use Cuba, a thorn in America's side for half a century, as a refueling stop for nuclear-capable bombers.

The Russian Defence Ministry denied the report and said it had no plans to open any military bases abroad, but a top U.S. general was drawn to say such a move would cross a "red line".

Moscow was the Caribbean island's key oil, arms and grain supplier for 30 years, until subsidies propping up the economy of Fidel Castro's revolutionary government fell to a trickle and then dried up entirely after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"We need to reestablish positions on Cuba and in other countries," news agency Interfax quoted Putin as saying at the weekly presidium meeting of key government ministers.

Read it all here.