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. ~ Djuna Barnes
It's like rape. You will ask a physician to rape a patient for treatment? This is unacceptable. ~ Yoel Donshin
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. ~ World Medical Association

Force-feeding is the practice of feeding an animal or human, against their will.

Quotes

  • 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."
    • Djuna Barnes; as qtd. in Mills, Eleanor; with Kira Cochrane (eds.) Journalistas: 100 Years of the Best Writing and Reporting by Women Journalists. New York: Carroll & Graf. (2005). p 163–166.
  • 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."
  • 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.
    • June Purvis; Emmeline Pankhurst, London: Routledge, p 134, ISBN 0-415-23978-8
  • 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.[10]
  • 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.
  • 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".

See also

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