ALERT: California Clears Way to Force-Feed Hunger-Striking Prisoners...Threatening Further Torture Against Those Protesting Torture
August 22, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Monday, August 18, the 43rd day of the California prisoners' hunger strike, the State of California won a court order allowing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike who it claims have been "coerced" into joining the hunger strike, even if those prisoners signed a “do not resuscitate” directive.
This is completely outrageous and illegitimate. Prisoner representatives have made clear that this hunger strike, like the two hunger strikes in 2011 to stop solitary confinement torture, is voluntary. And the fact that many prisoners have resumed eating or have been going on and off the hunger strike shows this, as do all public statements made by prisoner representatives at Pelican Bay State Prison and other California prisons.
In any case, force-feeding against prisoners' wishes is immoral and illegitimate—a form of torture targeting those prisoners whose hunger strike is focused on ending another form of torture: indefinite, long-term solitary confinement.
Jules Lobel, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is representing many California prisoners in an important lawsuit against the state of California to stop solitary torture, said force-feeding “violates international law and generally accepted medical ethics.” (LA Times, Aug 21, 2013) And the LA Times reported that “a medical expert on prison hunger strikes says allowing prison doctors to disregard patient directives and revive and even feed protestors against their will is ‘medically inappropriate.’” (LA Times, Aug 22, 2013)
Ina recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, medical ethicists wrote: "Force-feeding a competent person is not the practice of medicine; it is aggravated assault. Using a physician to assault prisoners no more changes the nature of the act than using physicians to 'monitor' torture makes torture a medical procedure." ("Guantanamo Bay: A Medical Ethics-free Zone?" NEJM, July 13, 2013)
The CDCR's action immediately calls to mind the U.S. torture chamber at Guantánamo, where hunger strikers are now on their 195th day and continue to be violently force-fed. (For a demonstration of the fact that force-feeding is torture, see the Youtube "Yasiin Bey [aka Mos Def] force-fed under standard Guantánamo Bay procedure") The specter of Guantánamo—and the outrage the torture of prisoners there has sparked worldwide—has forced the top prison medical official in California to claim publicly that they won't do anything like Guantánamo. They say that instead of forcibly shoving feeding tubes down people's throats, they're going to force nutrients into prisoners by intravenously pumping it into their bloodstream—with the Orwellian explanation, "It's not really a forced re-feeding at that point. It doesn't evoke images of Guantánamo or anything like that." (AP, 8/21)
Stay tuned to revcom.us for further coverage of the prisoner hunger strike and this latest outrage. For background, go to the "Stand Up for the Courageous California Prison Hunger Strikers" page in the Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution section of this site.
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