Writing on the final day of Ramadan, Sajida Jalalzai notes the absurdity of Guantánamo Bay officials accommodating religious fasters while cracking down on hunger strikers. In fact, she says, both types of hunger are “intimately connected”:
[They] push and pull together: one hunger, mandated in religious texts and traditions, and limited by clearly demarcated temporal bounds; the other, undertaken in protest of injustice, and theoretically as indefinite as the prisoners’ detentions. The military respects the detainees’ refusal of food on religious grounds, but refuses to honor their choice to hunger strike. Taken together, these two types of hunger point out the military’s confusion about just what to do with the prisoners at Guantánamo, not only in terms of where or for how long to keep them, but also in terms of the bases and ways in which to honor or deny their rights and autonomy. The military’s divergent responses to the same action, namely, the detainees’ refusal of food, underlines the irony of paying lip service to the religious rights of indefinitely detained prisoners of war.
More Dish on the ethics of force-feeding here, here, here, here, here, and here.
(Photo of a Gitmo “feeding chair” by Sgt. Brian Godette, Army 138th Public Affairs Detachment)
