Force-feeding

"1914 New York World magazine article. Barnes wrote, "If I, play acting, felt my being burning with revolt at this brutal usurpation of my own functions, how they who actually suffered the ordeal in its acutest horror must have flamed at the violation of the sanctuaries of their spirits. I had shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex.""

"In 2013, a mass hunger strike took place in Guantanamo Bay as a response to the indefinite detention and unjust treatment of prisoners captured during the ‘war on terror’. In response, the US used force-feeding against the hunger strikers, arguing it was needed to save their lives and uphold US security. Although the US argued its force-feeding policy was legal and humane, human rights and medical organisations criticised US force-feeding practices as constituting torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This article argues that the US undermined international human rights norms, laws and medical ethics in its management of hunger striking prisoners by using force-feeding to suppress hunger strikers and achieve national security interests. In doing so, the Obama administration reignited accusations of US torture and harmed its ethical standing in international society. The article argues that the US needs to incorporate international human rights standards into its hunger striker policy to uphold the dignity of prisoners in detention and overcome its legacy of torture in the ‘war on terror’."

"Dec. 30, 2005 – At least 46 people held at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba detention camp joined a disputed number of fellow detainees already refusing food in protest of their indefinite detention last week, the Department of Defense said in a statement yesterday. The announcement puts the official number of prisoners still fasting at 84. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and other humanitarian groups maintain that the real number of detainees refusing food could be much higher, a contention that is impossible to verify because the prison facility is closed to nearly all visitors. Two months after the hunger strike began, CCR and other detainee lawyers put the number who have been involved in the fast at over 200. But the military told The NewStandard that the number topped off at 131 and had dropped to about 26 in October. In a recent statement released by the Southern Command, the military said the number of participants fluctuated with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks and with the arrival of detainee lawyers, possibly accounting for the discrepancies between the two sides. "This technique [hunger striking] is consistent with Al-Qaeda training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States government to release them," the statement added. The new hunger strikers refused food on Christmas day, according to the military, and joined a five-month fast kept up by detainees to draw attention to what they, human rights groups and their lawyers say are inhumane conditions outlawed by international accords and domestic law. The renewed strike comes amid accusations from the United Nations that long-term hunger striking detainees have been treated cruelly. According to UN torture investigator Manfred Nowak, prison guards and doctors involved in force-feeding some of the prisoners did so with particular zealousness, causing an unspecified number to bleed and vomit. Nowak was among the investigators who had previously turned down an invitation to visit the camp, citing access restrictions imposed by the US. Thirty-two hunger strikers have been hospitalized and force-fed through nasal tubes, a prison camp spokesperson told the Boston Globe. In late October, US District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the Defense Department to notify the lawyers of prisoners it intends to force-feed before doing so."

"A man jailed in the US for trying to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes has gone on hunger strike, court papers have revealed. Briton Richard Reid is said to have been refusing food for several weeks and is being force-fed and hydrated."

"A government lawyer said that Reid had refused 58 meals by 9 April and that prison officials decided "that medical intervention was necessary". The lawyer added that prison officials were monitoring his condition."

"Six weeks into his hunger strike, Israel's parliament passed a law permitting the force-feeding of prisoners in order to keep them alive. Allan might have become a test case for the law, but doctors made it clear they would not participate, calling it unethical medical treatment. "It's like rape," says Yoel Donshin, a retired anesthesiologist and a member of Physicians for Human Rights. "You will ask a physician to rape a patient for treatment? This is unacceptable." Donshin doesn't believe Israeli politicians who supported the law want to save the lives of prisoners. "They do not care for the welfare of the prisoners," he says. "They just want him not to become a symbol or martyr.""

"Romanos has not been charged with terrorism. But two cases concerning terrorism acts are still pending — a fact that has kept Romanos from attending school. The only way he could think to claim his rights was to use his “body as a roadblock, for a breath of freedom,” as he stated at the start of his hunger strike. At N.Gennimatas general hospital, where Romanos was transferred after his health began to deteriorate, the atmosphere is tense. Hundreds of protesters are gathered outside. Inside, police officers are everywhere, trying to control the flow of information. The minister of justice is working on a proposal that would allow Romanos to take distance learning courses. But Romanos has rejected that idea, insisting he should be able to attend classes. With the help of the doctors in the hospital, Romanos is successfully resisting an order issued by a district attorney to force feed him. His lawyer confirmed last week that the order had been issued, adding that “This is obviously torture. It’s something never seen before in Greece.”"

"When federal prison officials at British Columbia’s Matsqui Psychiatric Centre routinely examined a Doukhobor woman on a hunger strike last week, they quickly realized that the frail 69-year-old was deteriorating. Doctors who saw Mary Astaforoff, a member of the radical Sons of Freedom sect, sent her by ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital about 90 km away. There, hospital staff force-fed Astaroroff for the second time since she again began refusing food in late September to protest against a three-year prison sentence for arson."

"Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets. The fresh allegations of prison abuse are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post. The statements provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place on the cellblock. Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers."

"Mohanded Juma Juma, detainee No. 152307, said he was stripped and kept naked for six days when he arrived at Abu Ghraib. One day, he said, American soldiers brought a father and his son into the cellblock. He said the soldiers put hoods over their heads and removed their clothes. Then, they removed the hoods. "When the son saw his father naked he was crying," Juma told the investigators. "He was crying because of seeing his father." He also said Graner repeatedly threw the detainees' meals into the toilets and said, "Eat it.""

"Doctors force-feeding prisoners at |Guantanamo are acting as an arm of the military and have abrogated their medical-ethical duties."

"Through the biotechnology of the force-feeding chair and the hunger strike in Guantanamo, this paper examines the camp as a site of necropolitics where bodies inhabit the space of the Muselmann – a figure Agamben invokes in Auschwitz to capture the predicament of the living dead. Sites of incarceration produce an aesthetic of torture and the force-feeding chair embodies the disciplining of the body and the extraction of pain while imposing the biopolitics of the American empire on “terrorist bodies”. Not worthy of human rights or death, the force-fed body inhabits a realm of indistinction between animal and human. The camp as an interstitial space which is beyond closure as well as full disclosure produces an aesthetic of torture on the racialised Other through the force-feeding chair positioned between visibility and non-visibility. Through the discourse of medical ethics and the legal struggle for rights, the force-feeding chair emerges as a symbol of necropolitics where the hunger strike becomes a mechanism to impede death while possessing and violating the corporeal body."

"In February 1914 Ethel Moorhead became the first suffragette to be force fed in Scotland. Force feeding, whilst it could never be described as fun, was particularly brutal in Perth Prison where rectal feeding was forced on some suffragettes. Fortunately for Ethel, she was confined in Calton Jail in Edinburgh and was released with nothing more severe than double pneumonia – the result of food getting into her lungs whilst being forcibly fed."

"She was on the run for several months during which time police attributed at least four arson attacks to her. Presumably they would have ascribed a fifth if she hadn't been spotted and arrested at Traquair House. This time though there was no Cat and Mouse Act release and she was force fed, causing the double pneumonia. She was released again with instructions to return to prison to complete her sentence. Guess what .... she went on the run again."

"A Greek prosecutor on Tuesday called for convicted terrorist Dimitris Koufontinas to be forced-fed as he entered the 47th day of a hunger strike, demanding to be moved to an Athens prison. Koufodinas, 62, has been in intensive care at Lamia Hospital since last week. On Monday he announced that he will also stop receiving liquids, including water. A Lamia court of first instance prosecutor ordered that all necessary medical measures be taken to ensure that he continues to receive liquid pharmaceutical treatment. The prosecutor’s order was issued at the suggestion of doctors “for the purpose of ensuring the life and health of the hunger striker.” Doctors say that the convicted killer’s life is in danger."

"3rd. By means of “gavage”.-This way of feeding infants is in use in France only, so far as I know. It is easily learnt, but cannot be performed by an uninstructed person. It is of great service in the case of prematurely born or weakly infants, whose power of suction is feeble. The illustration is from a photograph taken at the “Maternite de Paris”. Belluzzi appears to have been the first to try “gavage”."

"Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. on October 16, 1916 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne, who was a registered nurse, and Fania Mindell, an interpreter from Chicago, rented a small store-front space in Brownsville and canvassed the area with flyers written in English, Yiddish and Italian advertising the services of a birth control clinic. Sanger modeled the Brownsville Clinic after the birth control clinics she had observed in Holland in 1915. For ten cents each woman received Sanger's pamphlet What Every Girl Should Know, a short lecture on the female reproductive system, and instructions on the use of various contraceptives. The Clinic served more than 100 women on the first day and some 400 until October 26 when an undercover police woman and vice-squad officers placed Sanger, Byrne and Mindell under arrest. After being arraigned, Sanger spent the night in jail and was released the next morning. She re-opened the Clinic on November 14, only to be arrested a second time and charged with maintaining a public nuisance. Sanger opened the Clinic once again on November 16, but police forced the landlord to evict Sanger and her staff, and the Clinic closed its doors a final time. Sanger, Byrne and Mindell went to trial in January of 1917. Byrne, tried first, was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in Blackwell's Island prison and immediately went on a hunger strike. After 185 hours without food or water, she was forcibly fed. Before Byrne's condition proved fatal, Sanger and supporters prompted New York's Governor Whitman to issue a pardon. Sanger's own trial began on January 29, and she too was convicted. However, the court offered her a suspended sentence if she promised not to repeat the offense. She refused and was offered a choice of a fine or jail sentence. She chose the latter and spent thirty days in the Queens County Penitentiary without incident."

"I'll fuckin', I'll fuckin', sew your asshole closed, and keep feedin' you And feedin' you, and feedin' you, and feedin' you."

"Leaflet issued by the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement referring to 'The Case of William Ball.' In 1912 William Ball was sentenced to two months in Pentonville prison for breaking a window in the Home Office in protest against the sentence passed on a fellow suffragist. Subtitled 'Official Brutality on the Increase' the leaflet written by Henry W. Nevinson refers to the hunger-strike and force-feeding of William Ball whilst in prison and his subsequent detention in a 'lunatic' asylum for the mentally disturbed. The militant Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement was founded in 1910 by Victor Duval as a male counterpart to the Women's Social and Political Union. This leaflet, printed in purple and green reflects the close links between the two organisations that shared the same colour scheme."

"Mr Nowak has not been to Guantanamo, and turned down an invitation to the camp because the US refused to give him unrestricted access to the detainees. He told the BBC that he had received reports that some hunger strikers had had thick pipes inserted through the nose and forced down into the stomach. This was allegedly done roughly, sometimes by prison guards rather than doctors. As a result, some prisoners had reported bleeding and vomiting he said. "If these allegations are true then this definitely amounts to an additional cruel treatment," Mr Nowak said."

"Faced with the nightmarish conditions of the voyage and the unknown future that lay beyond, many Africans preferred to die. But even the choice of suicide was taken away from these persons. From the captain's point of view, his human cargo was extremely valuable and had to be kept alive and, if possible, uninjured. A slave who tried to starve him or herself was tortured. If torture didn't work, the slave was force fed with the help of a contraption called a speculum orum, which held the mouth open."

"Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office. …I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears."

"Thursday morning, 16th July ... the three wardresses appeared again. One of them said that if I did not resist, she would send the others away and do what she had come to do as gently and as decently as possible. I consented. This was another attempt to feed me by the rectum, and was done in a cruel way, causing me great pain. She returned some time later and said she had ‘something else’ to do. I took it to be another attempt to feed me in the same way, but it proved to be a grosser and more indecent outrage, which could have been done for no other purpose than torture. It was followed by soreness, which lasted for several days."

"WASHINGTON -- The US military said yesterday that a long-running hunger strike among detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison underwent a very significant increase" starting on Christmas Day, more than doubling the number of prisoners who are protesting their indefinite detention without trial by refusing to eat. A bloc of 46 prisoners began refusing meals on Dec. 25, the military said, bringing the total number of participants in the hunger strike to 84. A spokesman at the base said yesterday that 32 of the longer-term strikers have been hospitalized and are being force-fed through nasal tubes and the rest are under close medical observation. The numbers had more or less stayed at the same levels -- in the mid to high 30s -- for several weeks," said Army Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Martin, a spokesman for the prison. Then we had this very significant increase in the number of hunger strikers all of a sudden.""

"In October, lawyers for detainees told a judge that medics tried to persuade those on a hunger strike to start eating on their own by force-feeding them with unusually large feeding tubes inserted through their noses -- without painkillers."

"Since President Obama mentioned Supermax in a speech about Guantanamo, we wanted to take you there again. It's a sort of a 21st century Alcatraz, where convicted al Qaeda terrorists are force-fed and some guards worry about their own safety."

"60 Minutes has been told that there have been frequent hunger strikes among the Islamic terrorist inmates inside Supermax and to keep the inmates alive there are often force feedings. That's when an inmate is restrained and liquid nourishment is poured down a tube in his nose. We're told there have been about a dozen hunger strikers and one of them used to be Osama bin Laden's secretary. Former Warden Robert Hood told us that he supervised many of these feedings. "I probably conducted, authorized, conducted 350, maybe 400 of involuntary feedings. Again, not…individuals, because you could have one person, three meals a day for, you know, two months. That adds up," he tells Pelley. Bureau of Prisons' records that 60 Minutes has seen show there have been as many as 900 of what the bureau called "involuntary feedings" of terrorists in H-unit since 2001. Why did the prisoners stop eating? What was the complaint? Says Hood, "It was conditions of confinement." Some of the conditions they object to are outlined in a document: inmates get letters only from people approved by the prison and they get one, monitored, phone call a month, for 15 minutes."

"We must face the fact that artificial feeding is attended with risk and we must teach [suffragette prisoners] that, while we appreciate the risks, we are quite prepared to go on and will not be deterred from detaining people like [Moorhead] because there is a risk to their health, if we take the necessary steps to make sure their detention is effective... They have the idea that they can frighten us by pointing out the risk to health."

"The nation of Mauritania faces a myriad of social, political and economic problems, which has greatly impacted it’s ability to develop. While most Mauritanians live and work in urban centers, a sizable number still depend on agriculture and animal husbandry, specifically in rural areas where the government has had little influence in affecting policy. One area where this is most apparent has been with gavage, or the practicing of force feeding. In his book Mauritania, Alfred G. Gerteiny wrote this of gavage: Women are subjected to gavage-that is, forced feeding, in order to gain weight. Fathers send daughters 10 or 11 years of age to live with herdtending dependent aznagui who see to it that the girls gain weight … often by being tied to the ground, and, to expand their stomachs, given nothing by water for three days. Then they are crammed with milk, usually camel’s milk. Though decades have passed since Gerteiny wrote of the practice, gavage still occurs. In Mauritania, women who are overweight, or in some cases, obese, are considered beautiful and alternatively, women who weigh what we here would consider a healthy weight are shunned. In recent years, the government and NGO’s have forcefully led a campaign to discourage the practice. The forceful feeding of adolescent girls creates a plethora of health complications as the young girls mature into women. In the larger cities, the practice has visibly been cut, both by a changing of the times and by the discouragement of the practice. However, things are different in the desert, where people continue traditional practices."

"They have to restrain the prisoners when they feed them because they attack the nurses. They spit in their faces. They're simply restrained for 20 minutes so they can be fed Ensure. They get their choice of four flavors of Ensure. It's put in a very unobtrusive feeding tube smaller than a normal straw and it's put in there for 20 minutes, so they get breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

"6. Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially. The decision as to the capacity of the prisoner to form such a judgment should be confirmed by at least one other independent physician. The consequences of the refusal of nourishment shall be explained by the physician to the prisoner."

"The unfortunate patients had their mouth clamped shut, had a rubber tube inserted into their mouth or nostril. They keep on pressing it down until it reaches your esophagus. A china funnel is attached to the other end of the tube and a cabbage-like mixture poured down the tube and through to the stomach. This was an unhealthy practice, as the food might have gone into their lungs and caused pneumonia."

"While stating that any force-feeding deemed necessary for lifesaving purposes should not contradict "compelling internationally accepted standards of medical ethics or binding rules of international law", the judges at the tribunal also noted that the body of law laid down by the European court of human rights did not view force-feeding as "torture, inhuman or degrading treatment if there is a medical necessity to do so ... and if the manner in which the detainee is force-fed is not inhuman or degrading"."

"Opponents of torture have spent the past seven years advocating for a halt to the brutal excesses of the "War on Terror" from the Bush administration's rejection of the Geneva Conventions for detainees in Afghanistan to the waterboarding of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, as progress is finally being made in the international struggle against torture, the state of Connecticut has chosen this moment to launch a radical, pro-torture initiative of its own. In the case of Coleman v. Lantz, now awaiting a ruling by Superior Court Judge James T. Graham, the state's Department of Corrections has argued for the right to force feed a hunger-striking inmate in an excruciatingly painful manner -- although doing so has been condemned by the American Medical Association, the World Medical Association and the nation's leading medical ethicists."

"Coleman's stated purpose in starving himself was to draw attention to perceived injustices within Connecticut's legal system. He was neither suicidal nor mentally ill -- and, even today, retains his full mental capabilities. On September 16, 2008, he raised the stakes of his protest by refusing liquids. Shortly afterward, the prison's medical director, Dr. Edward Blanchette, had Coleman strapped down and -- without sedation -- tried to force a feeding tube through his nose into his stomach. This first attempt failed. "Success" only came after the inmate was screaming in agony and sneezing up blood. Eventually, Coleman succumbed to this torture and agreed to ingest liquids once again. He is now fighting in court for the right to resume his hunger campaign."

"One of the nation's preeminent bioethics scholars, Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, testified on Coleman's behalf that the feeding of competent prisoners against their will -- even to save their lives -- violates the most basic tenets of the medical profession. Rational, competent adults have a fundamental right to reject medical care. Force-feeding prisoners is no different than forcibly transfusing Jehovah's Witnesses or providing unwanted chemotherapy to terminally-ill cancer patients. The World Medical Association's 1975 Declaration of Tokyo strictly prohibits physicians from engaging in such practices, which it describes as "contrary to the laws of humanity." The AMA has fully embraced this document. When the United States began force-feeding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, two hundred fifty prominent physicians signed an open letter to a leading British journal, The Lancet, called for sanctions against the medical professionals involved in these nonconsensual interventions. Among the reasons for this outcry is that forcible feeding through a naso-gastric tube ranks alongside the most unpleasant and downright horrific experiences that one human being can inflict upon another. The British journalist Djuna Barnes volunteered to be "forcibly" fed for a muckraking exposé in The World Magazine (1914) and later wrote that "it is utterly impossible to describe the anguish of it." Others have compared it to being orally sodomized while paralyzed. Having placed such tubes into the noses of willing patients myself, in order to save their lives, I can assure you that driving one down the throat of an unwilling subject must be unspeakably ghastly."

"Another reason that physicians and bioethicists so strongly oppose forcible feeding is that this procedure is intimately tied to the ugliest passages in the history of modern medicine and associated with the worst political and social abuses of the calling. Great Britain inadvertently turned public opinion in favor of women's suffrage by force-feeding hunger-striking suffragists before World War I. Britain used the same tactic, with no more success, against Irish Republicans -- a practice that led to the gruesome death of Tom Ashe at Dublin's Mountjoy Jail in 1917. Finland adopted such tactics to suppress Communists in the 1930s; Turkey allegedly force-fed leftist prisoners as recently as 2001. Most notoriously, the Soviet Union pumped food into the stomachs of prominent dissidents, including Vladimir Bukovsky and Andrei Sakharov, to prevent the negative publicity that might have stemmed from their starvation. In Bukovysky's description of his torment, among the most haunting of all descriptions of human torture, he wrote, "I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out....I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst." That is the species of "medical care" that Connecticut now seeks to defend."

"Doboj, Bosnia - Outside the door of the Red Cross office here in the Serbian sector of northern Bosnia, a dozen anxious women gather on the off-chance of news. Their husbands are not among the 109 prisoners released by the Bosnian Muslims in Tuzla, 60 miles away, but perhaps one of the former captives has seen or heard of their men, most of them missing since the Serbs were pushed back in the September 1995 offensive. No news is not good news. One woman, pale and jumpy, poured out her fears that her husband had been "ritually murdered" by the mujahedin, whom many Serbs believe were sent in their thousands from Arab countries to fight for the Muslims. The Red Cross managed to register lists of Tuzla prisoners last month, but many men are unaccounted for. Former prisoners said they were not visited by any humanitarian agency for the first three or four months of their captivity. All the newly released prisoners I talked to were reluctant conscripts, and none seemed to know what the war was about. One, a grizzled, unshaven sergeant wearing a bright new jacket, described his 45 days of solitary confinement and of interrogation - on how many women he had raped and how many Muslims he had killed - accompanied by blindfolding and beatings. Later, he said, he was put in a shared cell in a regular prison. "Work" consisted of being handcuffed to a fence and made to pull grass. Sometimes he was taken into the prison yard to pick up cigarette butts dropped by more-kindly treated Muslim prisoners - deserters - who were kept separate from the Serbs, but who could watch him at his task. His guards got some fun out of making him shout: "I'm a dirty Chetnik!" Another prisoner, Goran Pandurevic, told of being captured when Muslim forces overran Serb positions. He was shut in a disused ambulance shed for two days, where he claimed he and his companions were beaten and humiliated, forced to "eat paper and soap", and given one-and-a-half litres of water a day for 30 men. Later, the prisoners were taken to Tuzla and put into a civilian prison, he said. Forty men were held in a cell measuring four metres by five and were kept there for three months without exercise or medical attention, apart from aspirins, for the wounded and sick. The men were often forbidden to sit down during the day. Drinking-water had to be collected in bottles from the toilets, which they visited three times a day. They were given no changes of clothes, no heating, and nothing to do. After three months they were taken out on work details, digging canals and rebuilding ruined buildings. After the months of darkness and confinement, Mr Pandurevic said, they "could hardly see or walk". He claimed that as the prisoners worked, guards subjected them to random beatings. Mr Pandurevic described his release as "a new birth". I asked him what he had done the night before, after being reunited with his family. "No going out drinking", he said. "I was drunk on the alcohol of life.""

""The tube filled up all my breathing space, I couldn't breathe. The young man began pouring in the liquid food. "I heard the noises I was making of choking and suffocation - uncouth noises human beings are not intended to make and which might be made by a vivisected dog. Still he kept on pouring." These horrific words aren't from the dark ages or a testimony of torture. They are the memories of a Scottish suffragette named Ethel Moorhead, and they describe events in a Scottish jail less than 100 years ago."

"[W]hat's not widely known is that Scotland was a key battleground of the suffragette movement. Our cities were the scenes of demonstrations and violent protest. Politicians were attacked, buildings were set on fire. Women who'd been brought up to be second class citizens found themselves battling with the authorities, going on hunger strike and facing the dehumanisation of being force fed. They did it for the right to vote and Ethel Moorhead was just one of the many Scots women at the front of the campaign. But how did a beautiful and talented artist form a well-to-do family end up being held down and force fed in Edinburgh's Calton jail?"

"One perpetrator of militancy was Ethel Moorhead, the daughter of an army surgeon. In 1911 she threw an egg at Winston Churchill, who was an MP for Dundee and a bitter opponent of votes for women. Later, Ethel was jailed for breaking a glass case at the Wallace monument, an act symbolising women's fight for freedom. She was jailed several times, but even behind bars Ethel ran the authorities ragged. But in 1914 she became the first woman to be force-fed in Scotland. Force-feeding had been carried out in England and doctors wrote petitions condemning the practice as barbaric. In Scotland, the judiciary was reluctant to follow, but in 1914 they capitulated. A newspaper spoke of "Scotland disgraced and dishonoured." "...Instead of passing through into the throat, the tube went into the top of my nose and injured the nerves of my right eye. They began feeding me through the mouth. One doctor used to put his finger through the extreme end of the left side of my jaw and cut me while the wardress put her finger through the right side of my jaw. Between the two my lips were nearly torn." That account from a recipient of force-feeding shows why it polarised public opinion. Perth prison became notorious for its brutal treatment of the women it held."

"There are credible allegations that Guantanamo hunger strikers are being force-fed in a cruel manner, the UN special rapporteur on torture has said. Manfred Nowak's comments came after it emerged that the number of detainees refusing food at the prison camp had more than doubled since 25 December. Some 84 inmates are now refusing food, according to the US military."

"Mr Nowak has not been to Guantanamo, and turned down an invitation to the camp because the US refused to give him unrestricted access to the detainees. He told the BBC that he had received reports that some hunger strikers had had thick pipes inserted through the nose and forced down into the stomach. This was allegedly done roughly, sometimes by prison guards rather than doctors. As a result, some prisoners had reported bleeding and vomiting he said. "If these allegations are true then this definitely amounts to an additional cruel treatment," Mr Nowak said. The allegations were rejected by Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maker. "To suppose that these people are being left bleeding - I know of no instance of that, there's been no reports of that, there's been no credible evidence produced by any investigation of that fact," he told the BBC. All those receiving what he called "internal nutrition" were being monitored by trained medical personnel, Lt Col Maker said."

"The US military defines a hunger strike as missing nine consecutive meals. Lawyers for some of the detainees have said the hunger strikers are protesting against their continued detention without trial and against the conditions in which they are being held, he adds. About 500 prisoners remain at Guantanamo, many of them captured in Afghanistan. Some have been held for nearly four years without charge. Human rights campaigners have expressed growing concern about the treatment of inmates at Guantanamo. The Bush administration has denied allegations of abuse at Guantanamo, insisting it does not torture prisoners."

"More than 250 medical experts have signed a letter condemning the US for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The experts, from seven nations, said physicians at the prison had to respect inmates' right to refuse treatment. The letter, in the medical journal The Lancet, said doctors who used restraints and force-feeding should be punished by their professional bodies."

"The open letter in the Lancet was signed by more than 250 top doctors from seven countries - the UK, the US, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands. "We urge the US government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned," the letter said. The doctors said the World Medical Association - a world body representing physicians, including those in the US - specifically prohibited force-feeding. They said the American Medical Association, a member of the world group, should instigate disciplinary proceedings against any members known to have violated the code. Detainees at the camp have said hunger-strikers were strapped into chairs and force-fed through tubes inserted in their noses."

"Dr David Nicholl, a UK neurologist who initiated the Lancet letter, told the BBC's World Today programme that US doctors going to Guantanamo Bay were being screened to ensure they agreed with the policy of force-feeding. "In effect they are screened to make sure they don't have doctors with a conscience." Dr Nicholl said it was the patient's decision to go on hunger strike and the doctor's responsibility was to explain the consequences and confirm the patient was sane. In February, Lt Col Martin, chief military spokesman at the US detention facility, said force-feeding was administered "in a humane and compassionate manner" and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. But Dr Nicholl said that "horrible as it may sound" the doctor had to conform to the wishes of hunger strikers, even if it led to their deaths. Dr Nicholl said the letter's signatories felt there was not enough publicity about the matter in the US media and that Americans needed to be challenged."

"July 2005: 52 detainees begin hunger strike, second of the year, in protest at detention and treatment 14 Sept: Lawyers say more than 200 are refusing food. The US military says 128 21 Sept: US says number falls to 45. No explanation given but some tube-feeding admitted 7 Oct: US says number down to 28, 20 of whom are force-fed 27 Oct: US judge "deeply troubled" by force-feeding 25 Dec: Hunger strikers leap to 84, the US says 9 Feb, 2006: US says number down from 84 to four but gives no reason"

"The United States could be violating the U.N. Convention Against Torture by force-feeding immigrant detainees on a hunger strike inside an El Paso detention facility, the United Nations human rights office said Thursday. The Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is concerned that force-feeding could constitute “ill treatment” that goes against the convention, which the United States ratified in 1994, spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told The Associated Press. The U.N.'s statement echoes concerns raised by 14 Democratic lawmakers who sent a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday requesting more information about nine Indian men who are being force-fed through nasal tubes after refusing to eat to protest what they described as unfair treatment. One of the hunger strikers, a 22-year-old asylum seeker who has not eaten in more than a month, said he was dragged from his cell three times a day and strapped down on a bed as a group of people poured liquid into tubes inserted into his nose. “It is critical that ICE commit to ending this practice,” said the letter spearheaded by Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who toured the El Paso Processing Center and met with the men after AP reported on the force-feeding last week."

"The American Medical Association and the Red Cross both condemn force-feeding as a form of torture. And yet, the U.S. government and the United Nations have both force-fed hunger-striking prisoners. The real problem? Most people probably don’t realize how complicated force-feeding is, and how much can go wrong."