I am fine with the Thatcher policy (wrt hunger strikes), are you?
Force-feeding is degrading and dehumanising, as the article demonstrates. It also wasn't Thatcher's policy with regard to the hunger strikers.
Best bit of the Bobby Sands Wikipedia page: "A burger bar in Tehran is named in honour of Sands.[59][60]".
I think James was arguing in favor of letting the hunger strikers starve to death.
3: Yeah, I think that was pretty clear.
2
... It also wasn't Thatcher's policy with regard to the hunger strikers
IIRC her alternative policy was let them die which was my point.
3
I think James was arguing in favor of letting the hunger strikers starve to death.
Actually I don't care much one way or the other, I was just pointing out the obvious alternative policy might not be any more appealing to LB.
Fwiw, where Guatanamo differs from the Thatcher policy* wrt to the hunger strikers, is that the hunger strikers were people who had been convicted in a court of law, rather than people interned indefinitely without trial.
* not that I agree with the Thatcher government's actions wrt to the hunger strike.
7
not that I agree with the Thatcher government's actions wrt to the hunger strike.
So what do you think should be done about prisoners who refuse to eat?
You could talk to them. And if allowing them to surrender their Korans would have ended the strike maybe you could allow them to surrender their Korans.
Or you could send the Yemenis you've already decided that you don't need to keep in your jail back to Yemen.
Hell, you could do both!
Or you could conduct the periodic reviews the President ordered be conducted more than 2 years ago (which Congress also ordered be conducted). But then you'd have more people that you'd have acknowledged that you have no reason to keep in your jail. So maybe following your own rules isn't that good an idea.
Not-quite-off topic: I work for a nonprofit that just finished a 500-odd page report on U.S. detainee treatment which is coming out tomorrow. www.detaineetaskforce.org. There's a chapter on the role of doctors that includes a lot about force feeding & hunger strikes, that I wrote. And there's going to be a thing at the national press club at 9 am which is open to the public.
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs104/1101561619973/archive/1112828150490.html
(It doesn't have much about the current hunger strike; we are relying on the same sources as everyone else there and trying to figure out exactly what's happening. But it does go into the history and...I probably shouldn't say what the recommendation is. Tune in tomorrow.)
You could admit that the whole policy is a failure, on multiple levels, and bring the prisoners to the US, to facilities with professional guards and wardens. (And thus get rid of the farce where no one is there more than a year, and each new guard/warden gets the chance to prove he's Strother Martin.)
I'm slowly coming around to the position that they ought to simply be released, tracked as best we can, and if they start engaging in terrorist activities treat them like any other terrorist. If that means let them go and kill them in a drone strike a couple of weeks later I'm fine with that. The chances of this policy being implemented is zero. They are going to more or less rot in gitmo for most of their lives, and this farce is going to drag on and on through multiple administrations all to scared of looking weak to do the right thing.
re: 7
In the case of the Thatcher government, I think they probably shouldn't have continued to revoke the special category status, and when they agreed to bring it back and meet the prisoners' demands in some compromise form, they shouldn't then later have reneged on that agreement and triggered the second hunger strike.
In terms of Guantanamo, what Charley says above. With 'try them properly, or let them go' as a default option.
I think it's more dignified and probably better to let people die if they want to starve themselves to death, rather than using torturous forms of force feeding so you can keep them alive to interrogate/torture them some more.
Better than death or torture would be due process. But I guess that would just be giving in to the terrorists.
I think it's more dignified and probably better to let people die if they want to starve themselves to death
Yes, but from the point of view of the government it creates martyrs, so they don't care about that. Addressing the hunger strikers' issues would be better still, but...
17
I think it's more dignified and probably better to let people die if they want to starve themselves to death ...
Is that the policy in any prison in the US?