The Pentagon will not stop force-feeding Guantanamo detainee hunger strikers despite criticism from some doctors that has mounted even as the number of strikers has fallen.
A group of 263 doctors from seven countries called on Washington to end the force-feeding and use of restraint chairs for detainees fed through nasal tubes into their stomachs at the military prison at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base.
Their letter, in the British medical journal The Lancet, also questioned how seriously the US medical profession takes allegations of torture by its own members.
"The policy of the department is unchanged, and it is to support the preservation of life by appropriate clinical means and to do that in a humane manner," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman.
The Pentagon said there were six detainees currently on a hunger strike, of whom three are being tube-fed. It said the total number of hunger strikers peaked at about 130 in September and was as high as 84 in late December, but fell to about a half-dozen in January.
Detainees launched the hunger strike last August to protest conditions and lack of legal rights at Guantanamo, their lawyers have said.
"The allegations are of quite startling brutality in the implementation of force-feeding," said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Massachusetts-based Physicians for Human Rights.
"Yet there's been no independent medical evaluation, and thereabsolutely needs to be one.""It's like all the other aspects of detainee treatment - there's been no transparency whatsoever," Rubenstein added.
In the Lancet letter, doctors from Ireland, Britain, the United States, Germany, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands said the World Medical Association specifically prohibits force-feeding in declarations to which the American Medical Association isa signatory.
In a written response to questions, the Pentagon said, "Professional organization declarations by doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc. are not international treaties, therefore are non-binding and not applicable to sovereign nation-states."