forced feeding – Engaging Peace

Wednesday December 10 is Human Rights Day, a commemoration day for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The theme this year is Human Rights 365—that is, a reminder that every day should be a human rights day.

Brothers and sisters, we have a long way to go.

Racism violates human rights.
Slavery violates human rights.
Torture violates human rights.
Murder violates human rights.
Prolonged solitary confinement violates human rights.
Even severe poverty is a human rights violation.

Racism, slavery, torture, murder, prolonged solitary confinement, and severe poverty are not things people choose or desire. Nor, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, do people deserve such abominations, even if those people are different, annoying, foreign, other, scary.

The US government is fond of pointing the finger at human rights violations in selected other nations (not, generally, their allies), but such finger pointing is just another example of “Do as I say, not as I do.” All those human rights violations take place in the US today, every day, and all too many people are quick to find “justifications” concerning why racism , slavery, torture , murder, etc., are not human rights violations if done in or by the United States.

On Human Rights Day, 365 days a year, try to listen to a different drummer. Fight racism, fight slavery, fight torture. Raise your voice against murder, solitary confinement, poverty, forced feeding, unequal opportunity, and all the social injustices that infect our society and damage us all. Make the world a better place. Right here at home. Do what you can. 365.

Transparency is a term seen increasingly in the media. Wikileaks, founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, is best known for releasing secret documents provided by Bradley Manning. Wikileaks, like many of the progressive online media sources, strives for transparency when people in power would prefer secrecy.

Consider this recent story from Al Jazeera: For over three months, more than 100 of the detainees at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, most of whom have never been accused of a crime and/or were actually cleared for release three years ago, have been on a hunger strike.

As one prisoner, Musa’ab Omar Al Madhwani, said, “Indefinite detention is the worst form of torture….I have no reason to believe that I will ever leave this prison alive. It feels like death would be a better fate than living in these conditions.”

Consider also the issue of forced feeding. In its Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers, adopted in 1991 and revised in 2006 (in large part due to issues at Guantánamo), the World Medical Association states: “[f]orcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment”—and “inhuman and degrading treatment” violates the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, which the U.S. helped develop and has ratified.

Some people argue that it is more humane to force feed prisoners than to let them die in protest of their treatment. But are there not alternatives to these two extremes, alternatives that are consistent with human rights principles?

If Americans want to live in a truly democratic society, we need:

Information about inhumanity and injustice being perpetrated by Americans
The opportunity to reflect on the inhumanity and injustice and its alternatives
The will to consider and promote alternatives.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology