Irish doctors today joined more than 260 colleagues internationally to call on the United States to abandon the force-feeding of hunger strikers in Guantanamo Bay.
Sinn Féin today supported medics from seven countries, including best-selling British author Oliver Sacks, signed a joint letter published in this week's edition of the leading medical journal The Lancet.
International agreements prevent doctors from force-feeding hunger strikers if the individuals have made an informed choice about their protest, the doctors said.
Restraint chairs to hold inmates while feeding tubes are inserted - which are reportedly used at the US military base in Cuba - are also banned, they added.
Doctors at Guantanamo Bay who are carrying out the actions should be disciplined by their professional bodies, the letter concluded.
A total of 263 doctors from the Ireland, the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Australia, Italy and The Netherlands signed the letter, which was co-ordinated by Dr David Nicholl of City Hospital, Birmingham.
"The American Medical Association should launch disciplinary proceedings against any of its members known to have participated in violating prisoners' rights in this way," Dr William Hopkins of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.
The World Medical Association specifically prohibits force-feeding in the Declarations of Tokyo and Malta, to which the American Medical Association is a signatory.
Sinn Féin's Aengus Ó Snodaigh supported the letter, noting that Irish hunger striker, Michael Gaughan, died in 1974 after a tube for force feeding punctured his lung.
Speaking from Stormont today, where he was attending an event to mark the anniversary of Bobby Sands' birthday, Mr Ó Snodaigh said: "On this the 25th Anniversary of the 1981 republican hunger strikes, the Dublin Government must echo this call by publicly calling on the United States to immediately cease their practice of force-feeding hunger strikers in Guantanamo Bay."
