LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, NEW YORK TIMES IN RESPONSE TO OP-ED "GITMO IS KILLING ME."
LETTERS
Harsh Treatment at Guantánamo
Published: April 21, 2013
To the Editor:
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Re “Gitmo Is Killing Me” (Op-Ed, April 15):
The anguished autobiographical précis of Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel is but a microcosm of the inhumane conditions being widely experienced by detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
Ten years ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross found deplorable treatment and evidence of violations of the Geneva Conventions. These circumstances still obtain, and despite repeated pledges to close the facility made by President Obama, which date from before his inauguration, the prison and its practices subsist.
ROGER BRANDWEIN
Scarsdale, N.Y., April 15, 2013
Scarsdale, N.Y., April 15, 2013
The writer is a lawyer.
To the Editor:
Buried in the deeply disturbing Op-Ed article by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel is the revelation that military physicians remain actively involved in the process of force-feeding competent detainees.
Such practice violates the canons of both the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association; nonconsensual force-feeding of competent adults is widely regarded as a form of torture by professional ethicists and the broader medical community.
While civilian doctors may be powerless to control what occurs behind the locked doors of a military facility, we should make every effort to prevent the physicians involved in these breaches of human rights from obtaining state medical licenses after they leave the military.
These misguided people might think twice about inserting feeding tubes into unwilling prisoners if they knew that doing so would bar them from practicing stateside in the future.
JACOB M. APPEL
New York, April 15, 2013
New York, April 15, 2013
The writer is a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
To the Editor:
Whether or not Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel is innocent, as he says, he does not deserve to be treated as he describes. Moreover, we Americans deserve better than a military that feels justified in treating its prisoners inhumanely.
In the “war on terror,” there is no question that we are right and that they are wrong. But we should also be good to their evil. Instead, we have become only the lesser evil — which is still evil.
Surely, until the wrongs of Guantánamo are acknowledged, ended and adjudicated — as those of Abu Ghraib were — the United States has no right going around wagging its finger at other countries for their human rights abuses.
SAMUEL REIFLER
Rhinebeck, N.Y., April 15, 2013
Rhinebeck, N.Y., April 15, 2013
