U.S. military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some of them were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into “restraint chairs,” sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward.
Detainees who refuse to eat have been placed in isolation to prevent them from being pressured by other hunger strikers, the officials said, and they have been told that their protests are futile because their petitions for release have been denied.
The measures appear to have had dramatic effects. The chief military spokesman at Guantanamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy Martin, said Wednesday that the number of detainees on hunger strike had dropped, from 84 at the end of December to four.
Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantanamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the center.
Martin said forced feeding was carried out “in a humane and compassionate manner,” and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. He said in a statement that “a restraint system to aid detainee feeding” was being used.
Military officials denied that they were taking punitive measures to break the strike. They said they were sensitive to the ethical issues raised by feeding the detainees involuntarily and that their procedures were consistent with those of federal prisons in the United States. Those prisons authorize the involuntary treatment of hunger strikers when there is a threat to an inmate’s life or health.
Two military officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the question, said the use of restraint chairs started after it was found that some hunger strikers were deliberately vomiting in their cells after having been tube-fed.