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For the OT, a hunger strike of any kind raises some interesting moral questions. It raises the issue of, is a hunger strike a type of blackmail and thus morally wrong, or is it an attempt to bring attention to a cause and morally right. After all, it's taking a hostage and saying, "I'll kill the hostage if you don't meet my demands! And the death will be your fault!" only you're pointing the gun at your own head. It's an attempt to make someone else be guilty for your death by your own hand. That's the power behind the hunger strike. It's a game of chicken. How close to death will you get, before you stop the hunger strike or the authorities cave and promise to investigate or change something? Or will you end up starving yourself to death because neither side gives in?
The whole idea of a prison is that someone is forced to stay there until the jailer says you can go, and the jailer gets to control every minute of your life. Even killing yourself is undermining the authority of the jailer. The authorities expect defiance and deal with it by force. It's how the game is played. A hunger strike is seen as another act of defiance. You eat what and when they tell you to eat. You refuse to eat? They'll force you, unless they simply don't care if you kill yourself.
But the UN and AMA and other organizations that try to limit what is right and wrong say force feeding is a form of cruel punishment. Of course, they also say holding someone indefinitely without trial is also wrong.
When you are cut off from all recourse to any law whatsoever, I imagine such desperate actions (perhaps the only "action" one can do) is the only thing left to do. Either that or rot away in the gulag, forever forgotten.
Again, the terrible issue here is not that they are in fact innocent. The issue is that no one will ever know if they really are guilty or innocent because there has been no trial for these people. The US government has no accountability in this at all. These prisoners (oh, pardon me, "detainees") have no recourse to ANY law.
Law does not exist for these people--they are in limbo. They have only one way they can try desperately to bring attention to the problem is by refusing to eat, perhaps the only miniscule bit of autonomy left to them.
I just read online that it costs $150 million a year to run the prison. Almost a million dollars a year for each inmate. The average US prison spends closer $30k per inmate and the supermax prisons is more like $60k per inmate. Why is it so expensive?? The fewer rights you have, the more it costs. Crazy.
Baldy put, we done effed up. And we've effed up to such a horrendous magnitude that we will need to eat a good amount of crow when we DO address the prisoners who have been detained there.
When you say 'effed up' it suggests that the USA started doing things they would normally not do (such as secret prisons). Unfortunately, I thinks it is what they >would< normally do, it's just that concealing it is difficult, and they have not been able to do that.
Comments
The whole idea of a prison is that someone is forced to stay there until the jailer says you can go, and the jailer gets to control every minute of your life. Even killing yourself is undermining the authority of the jailer. The authorities expect defiance and deal with it by force. It's how the game is played. A hunger strike is seen as another act of defiance. You eat what and when they tell you to eat. You refuse to eat? They'll force you, unless they simply don't care if you kill yourself.
But the UN and AMA and other organizations that try to limit what is right and wrong say force feeding is a form of cruel punishment. Of course, they also say holding someone indefinitely without trial is also wrong.
Again, the terrible issue here is not that they are in fact innocent. The issue is that no one will ever know if they really are guilty or innocent because there has been no trial for these people. The US government has no accountability in this at all. These prisoners (oh, pardon me, "detainees") have no recourse to ANY law.
Law does not exist for these people--they are in limbo. They have only one way they can try desperately to bring attention to the problem is by refusing to eat, perhaps the only miniscule bit of autonomy left to them.
It all boils down to that, don't it?