Yesterday was the first day of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, and at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba, more than a hundred prisoners (approximately a hundred and six of the hundred and sixty-six held there) continued an ongoing hunger strike against the conditions of their confinement. The Obama Administration has been force-feeding them, citing “the policy of the Department of Defense to support the preservation of life and health by appropriate clinical means and standard medical intervention, in a humane manner.” In a further nod to the humane, it has decided, for the duration of Ramadan, to force-feed them only after sunset and before dawn.
The same day, a federal judge, Gladys Kessler, dismissed a request by a Syrian prisoner to stop the force-feeding, saying she lacked the jurisdiction to make such a ruling. Kessler strongly condemned the practice, and said that President Obama—who has himself criticized it—has authority to halt it, and should. “It is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as the statements from the organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating and degrading process,” she wrote, calling the practice illegal and unethical.
Also yesterday, a London-based human-rights group called Reprieve released a video, directed by Asif Kapadia, in which the musician and actor Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, undergoes nose-to-stomach force-feeding according to military instructions that Al Jazeera leaked in May. The video, nearly five minutes long, is extremely uncomfortable to watch: Bey is shackled to a chair while a tube is forced down his throat by a medical attendant, all according to “standard operating procedure.” He writhes, pleads, and breaks down, weeping. At the military prison, detainees are left strapped to the chair for up to two hours to keep them from expelling the food. Some of them have urinated and defecated on themselves.
Many people on Twitter were amazed by Bey’s courage, but others mocked him. One user tweeted, “what is tougher to watch this Mos Def video or 2 planes crashing into the Twin Towers?” A second declared, “Mos Def is officially a retard.” However mean-spirited these pronouncements, they raise useful questions. Why should a popular musician take this upon himself? Isn’t this video just another publicity stunt? Or is it a legitimate form of performance art? An avant-garde artist like Marina Abramović, who cuts or whips or starves herself during performances, is accorded the respect of a MOMA retrospective. So why shouldn’t a commercial performing artist like Bey be applauded for having the courage to put his body through similar rigors in view of the public?
But debating Bey’s intentions may not be the point. When the late Christopher Hitchens had himself videotaped being waterboarded—right around the time he got photographed receiving a Brazilian wax—George Packer wrote that the “uncharitable view is that Hitchens will do anything to be noticed, that celebrity elicits a kind of masochism in him, and that being unpublished or unheard or unseen for even a day must be more agonizing for him than having his pubic hair removed by strips of hot wax or trying to breathe while water is poured over a towel spread across his face.” Packer conceded that this may well be true. Yes, he recognized, Hitchens liked to be the center of attention; yes, he did engage in a kind of gonzo journalism. But, Packer went on, the experience allowed Hitchens to detail > his sensations and emotions with admirable exactness; he strikes a balance between self-presentation and self-effacement (always apologizing for mentioning his own feelings); he moves easily between the particular moment and the larger concern. And as with the earlier essay, he pulls up short. “If waterboarding does not constitute torture,” Hitchens concludes when it’s over, citing Lincoln on slavery, “then there is no such thing as torture.” This is powerful testimony.
Surely this video will help Bey’s album, folio, or film sales; he and his public-relations team realize that the exposure will promote his brand. But he deserves our admiration nonetheless for using his influence in the service of righteous protest. The video, released on a scorching July day, a particularly difficult one for fasting, brought to mind Rebecca Mead’s verdict on Angelina Jolie’s recent decision to make public her preventive double-mastectomy surgery: “It is what celebrity is for.”
