30 May 2013
From: Detainee(s) on hunger strike
in Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay An
open letter to my military
doctor: Allow independent medical access
Dear Doctor,
I
do not wish to die, but I am prepared
to run the risk that I may end up doing so, because I am protesting the fact that I have been locked up for more than a decade,
without a trial, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and denied access
to justice. I have no other way to get my message
across. You know that the authorities have taken everything from me.
For this reason, I am respectfully requesting that independent medical professionals be allowed into Guantánamo to treat me, and that they be given full access to my medical
records, in order to determine the best treatment for me.
You claim to be acting according
to your duties as a physician to save my life. This is against
my expressed wish. As you should know,
I am competent to make my own decisions about medical treatment.
When I try to refuse
the treatments you offer, you force them upon me, sometimes violently For those reasons,
you are in violation of the ethics
of your profession, as the American
Medical Association1 and World Medical Association2 have made clear.
My decision
to go on hunger strike
and to endure semi-starvation
for over 100 days was not entered
into lightly. I am doing it because
it is literally the only method I have to make the outside world pay attention.
Your response to my carefully
considered decision cannot logically lead to the conclusion that your only goal is to save my life—your actions
over recent months
do not support such an inference.
For those of us being force-fed against our will, the process
of having a tube repeatedly forced up our noses and down our throats in order to keep us in a state of semi-starvation is extremely painful
and the conditions under which it is done are abusive. If you truly had my best medical
interests at heart,
you could have talked to me like a human being about my choices,
instead of treating
me in a way that feels like I am being punished
for something.
You must know that your professional overreaction to my participation in the hunger
strike has been condemned by no lesser
an authority than the United
Nations; the Special
Rapporteur on Health
has stated unequivocally that health care personnel may not apply undue pressure
of any sort on individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse
of a hunger strike, nor is it acceptable to use threats
of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike.3
In any regard, I cannot trust
your advice, because
you are responsible to your superior
military officers who require you to treat me by means unacceptable to me, and you put your duty to them above your duty to me as a doctor.
Your dual loyalties make trusting you impossible.
For these reasons, our present doctor-patient relationship cannot contribute to resolving the threats to my health that this hunger strike is engendering. You may be able to keep me alive for a long time in a permanently
debilitated state. But with so many of us on hunger
strike, you are attempting a treatment experiment
on an unprecedented scale. And you cannot
be certain that human error
will not creep
in and result in one or more of us dying.
Your superiors, up to and including President Obama, their
Commander-in-Chief, recognise that my death or that of another hunger
striker here would have serious undesirable consequences. You have been
ordered to guarantee—with absolute certainty—my survival, but it is beyond
your (or perhaps
any doctor’s) ability
to do that.
I have some sympathy
for your impossible position. Whether you continue in the military
or return to civilian practice, you will have to live with what you have done and not done here at Guantánamo for the rest of your life. Going
forward, you can make a difference. You can choose
to stop actively
contributing to the abusive conditions I am currently
enduring.
I am asking you only to raise with your superiors
my urgent request
that I be allowed access to examination
by and independent medical advice
from a doctor or doctors
chosen by my lawyers, in confidence, and that those doctors to be supplied
with my full medical notes in advance
of their visit.
This is the least you can do to uphold the minimum of your oath to “do no harm.” Yours sincerely,
The Detainees on Hunger
Strike at Guantánamo
Bay Naval Base
(Signed by detainee)
/s/ Younous Chekkouri, ISN 197 Nabil Hadjarab, ISN 238 Shaker Aamer, ISN 239 Ahmed Belbacha, ISN 290 Abu Wa’el Dhiab,
ISN 722 Samir Mukbel, ISN 043
Adel al-Hakeemy, ISN 168 Sanad al-Kazimi, ISN 1453 Mohammed Hidar, ISN 498 (Signed by lawyers on behalf of their clients)
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