More than 200 prisoners remain on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay and the US military is force-feeding 21 of them, Amnesty International and a lawyer representing some of the detainees said today.
Consultant psychiatrist Trevor Turner demonstrates force-feeding methods, on the legal director of Reprieve Clive Stafford Smith, that are allegedly being used by US authorities on hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay
The Americans are keeping the 21 alive by forcing food into their stomachs through tubes pushed up their noses, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith told a news conference.
The prisoners are shackled to their beds 24 hours a day to stop them removing the tubes, he said.
"This is the 56th day of the hunger strike," said Stafford Smith before making a comparison with the Irish republican campaign of 1981, when 10 prisoners starved themselves to death in protest at British policy in Northern Ireland.
"We know from experience that the first person to die in those hunger strikes was after 46 days," he said.
Lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners say many have declined food since early August to protest what they consider their inhumane conditions and indefinite confinement without legal rights.
Details of the protest are disputed.
Two weeks ago, the US military put the number of hunger strikers at 36, down from 130 the previous week. It did not give a reason for the decline.
At the time, lawyers representing the detainees said 210 of the roughly 500 foreign terrorism suspects held at the naval base in Cuba were refusing food. Stafford Smith, who represents some 40 detainees, said there was no reason to believe that figure had fallen in the past two weeks.
Amnesty International said it sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair today, urging him to put pressure on the US government to meet the strikers' demands.
"It is absolutely basic that those demands for those men are met," said Kate Allen, director of Amnesty's UK division.
The United States opened the prison at Guantanamo in January 2002, with many of its detainees picked up in Afghanistan. Only four have been charged and many have been held more than three years. Some former prisoners have said they were tortured.
Amani Deghayes, sister of one of the British Guantanamo detainees Omar Deghayes, told the news conference her brother's decision to starve himself showed his desperation.
"From what I know of my brother's personality, this is so unlike him because he loves life, he's very curious," she said. "To go on this long is not what I know of my brother."
The US military says its policy at the camp is to encourage prisoners to eat and to feed them involuntarily "if they get to a condition where their life is in jeopardy".
They define a hunger striker as a detainee who refuses nine straight meals.
Doctors have criticised the policy, saying it contravenes international codes of medical ethics.
"The notion that a qualified medical practitioner would be prepared to supervise such a procedure (as force-feeding through a tube), goes against all medical ethics, certainly in this country," said Trevor Turner, clinical director of St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.