Document Type

Chapter

Publication Date

2013

Publication Title

Body/State

Abstract

[In the absence of an abstract the beginning of the Introduction is provided.] The first coordinated hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility began in February of 2002, and the last of these strikers were the first to be fed against their will by the United States Department of Defense (Dao 2002). During the June/ July 2005 strike, approximately 50 of the 52 to 200 detainees on strike were fed intravenously (Gutierrez 2005: 9, 11). When the strike recommenced in August as many as 20 of its 76 to 210 participants were being kept at the camp hospital and being fed intravenously and through nasal tubes. According to camp spokesman Major Jeffrey J. Weir, the hospitalized strikers were not generally strapped to their beds and gurneys, but were in handcuffs and leg restraints (see Lewis 2005b, Gutierrez 2005). In December 2005, restraint chairs arrived at the camp (Golden 2006b) and their use saw the number of strikers drop from 84 in January of 2006 to 4 by February of that year (Golden 2006a). Numbers rose briefly to 86 in May 2006. A new strike began at the start of 2007, and in April most of the then 17 participants were being force-fed (Golden 2007a, Goldenberg 2007). At the start of the Obama presidency, between 40 and 70 of the 245 remaining detainees were on strike, and 35 of these strikers were being force-fed (Reid 2009, Rosenberg 2009). As of at least August 20 I 0, the Department of Defense no longer reveals the precise number of detainees being force-fed at Guantanamo Bay (Rosenberg 2010).

Comments

First published in A. Cameron & J. Dickinson ed. 2013. Body/State. Ashgate.

Download

Included in

Geography Commons

Share

COinS