Yasiin Bey, widely known by his former stage name Mos Def, has subjected himself to the appalling force-feeding procedure that is routinely performed on hunger-strike detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Bey appears in a video produced by the Human rights organisation Reprieve, shedding light on the horrifying procedure that is currently being carried out on 44 of the 120 hunger strike detainees at the Cuban detention camp and interrogation facility. In February this year, a hunger strike escalated due to detainees protesting searches that were carried out on their Korans, progressing further as a protest against President Obama’s stalled closure of the facility, according to the Washington Post.
The video begins as Yasiin Bey trades his impeccable clothing for the infamous orange jumpsuit, is cuffed and secured firmly to what looks like a dentist’s chair. The force feeding procedure is carried out with a tube inserted in to the nose, with liquid pumped in to the stomach. Evident from Bey writhing, crying out and begging for the volunteer doctors to stop, the procedure is acutely painful, and can take an excruciating 2 hours to perform.
Bey is a regular social activist outside of his music and acting careers—he protested about the murder conviction of death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal in 2000; he spoke out about the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2007 and said he didn’t watch any of Osama Bin Laden’s video messages because he didn’t trust the English translations.
In 2008, US President Barack Obama referred to the detention camp as a “sad chapter of American history”. Plans to close the facility in the following year never eventuated, and in 2011, the US Secretary of Defense said chances of closing Guantanamo Bay were “…very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress.”
The short documentary of Yasiin Bey’s highly graphic force-feeding procedure can be viewed below. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
Via TIME.
