This is What Force Feeding a Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Looks Like

Rapper Yasiin Bey's new video is very hard to watch--although that's very much part of the point.

By Aura Bogado Jul 08, 2013

Today is the first day of Ramadan. For the next 30 days, many Muslims will fast from sunrise to sunset, in accordance to their faith. But since February, more than 100 Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been refusing food. That’s because they’re on hunger strike, as a form of protest due to the conditions they’ve endured for more than a decade–having never faced trial by the US government that’s placed them there.

45 of the hunger strikers are being force fed against their will, although US government lawyers have remarkably claimed they will honor Ramadan and only force feed the prisoners after sundown. On this first day of Ramadan, Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) released a video that painfully illustrates the standard operating procedure US agents use for force-feeding a Guantanamo Bay prisoner.

Warning: It’s very hard to watch–although that’s very much part of the point.