Event:

Today's article in the Guardian Newspaper, 25^th June, 2013, entitled: "Force-feeding Guantánamo detainees is unethical and inhumane" is one of a string of recent reports and commentaries about the brutal mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners in the notorious Guantánamo prison camp. The majority of the prison population are on hunger strike, 104 out of 166 prisoners as of Monday 24^th June, according to an article by Charlie Savage in the New York Times who argues for transferring the prisoners to the U.S. mainland as a possible solution.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a perspective piece on the 13^th June with the title: ‘Guantánamo Bay: A Medical Ethics-Free Zone?" that opposed the current "violation of medical ethics" by medical professionals under military jurisdiction and argued that a hunger striker's goal is "not to die but to have perceived injustices addressed". Likewise, a major British medical journal, The Lancet, launched a petition against the abuses in Guantánamo prison.

The Guardian Newspaper from Britain has been following the case of Shaker Aamer who is the last British remaining resident of the camp who has described the use of "freezing cold" conditions in cells and the use of "metal tipped" feeding tubes to make life as painful as possible for the prisoners. Other articles have focused on the use of psychological torture as well as degrading practices to make prisoners stop their protest.

Comment:

The media have clearly exposed the inhumane conditions, the torture, the degradation and the moral and legal ambiguities of the U.S. run prison in Guantánamo Bay, but two additional points are worth adding.

First, this ongoing story is not only about a single prison or a single government policy, rather it says something fundamental about the U.S. culture and the democracy that it sings about to the world. Situated on a military base in Cuba to quietly insulate it from legal intervention or ethical norms, Guantánamo has become a moral black hole for the U.S. whose democratically elected governments, headed first by Bush and now by Obama, have each demonstrated a defining weakness of  democracy.  In the face of an ideological challenge from a morally assertive opponent, democracy cannot uphold or adhere to its own values in a distinguished manner. Democracy surrenders to ‘dictatorship' and ‘demagoguery', today, as it did in ancient Rome and Athens, when faced with a challenge.

Despite its military might the U.S. has felt weak and unable to protect its interests and its democracy without grossly violating all the fundamental principles and rights of man that it hypocritically claims are ‘universal'. Hence, the systematic torture and abuse, despite the fact that these have been exposed for all the world to see.

Second, ethics and law are fragmented: there is military law and civil law, medical ethics and general morality. This is another weakness of the West and its patchwork culture, and this has left medical practitioners serving in the U.S. military torn between two masters.

It comes as no surprise then that the Muslims who are suffering abuse in Guantánamo Bay were such an inspiration of moral ascendancy that one of the former U.S. prison guards, Terry Holdbrooks, embraced Islam himself when he saw the certainty and dignity of their faith.

Dr. Abdullah Robin