Activist is force-fed to protest Guantanamo treatment
The rapper Yasiin Bey agreed to be force-fed on camera as a way to protest the military force-feeding more than 40 prisoners on a hunger strike in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, made the disturbing video, below, with the U.K.-based human rights organization Reprieve.
More than 100 Guantanamo prisoners are participating in the hunger strike, some of them since February. Four of these inmates have sued the federal government, arguing, among other claims, that the force-feeding will violate their religious freedom once Ramadan begins.
At the end of the video, Bey explains that the procedure was "unbearable."
"I really couldn't' take it," he says.
The American Medical Association, the International Red Cross and other groups oppose force-feeding, saying prisoners have a right to starve themselves. But the U.S. civilian and military prisons policy states that allowing prisoners to die by starvation is inhumane.
