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| Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla |
By Herald Sun, May 2, 2013
CUBA'S foreign minister has demanded that Washington shut its controversial jail at Guantanamo Bay and return the long-held military base to Havana.
The comments by Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva came a day after US President Barack Obama vowed again to shut the military prison, saying it was damaging US interests.
"We are deeply concerned about the legal limbo that supports the permanent and atrocious violation of human rights at the illegal naval base in Guantanamo, a Cuba territory that was usurped by the United States, a centre of torture and deaths of prisoners who are under custody," Mr Parrilla said.
He said 160 people had been detained in Guantanamo for 10 years, "without any guarantees, without being tried by a court or the right to legal defence".
"That prison and military base should be shut down and that territory should be His comments came as the UN's human rights office said that force-feeding Guantanamo Bay hunger strikers is a breach of international law.
"If it's perceived as torture or inhuman treatment - and it's the case, it's painful - then it is prohibited by international law," Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, said.
Out of 166 inmates held at the prison at the remote US naval base in southeastern Cuba, 100 are on hunger strike, according to the latest tally from military officers. And of those, 21 detainees are being fed through nasal tubes.
Mr Coville explained that the UN bases its stance on that of the World Medical Association, a 102-nation body whose members include the United States, which is a watchdog for ethics in healthcare.
In 1991 the WMA said that forcible feeding is "never ethically acceptable".
"Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting," it said.
That WMA ruling followed a 1975 declaration that artificial feeding methods should never be used without a prisoner's permission, and that a prisoner had the right to refuse all food if a physician considered the individual capable of "unimpaired and rational judgment" about the consequences.
Artificial feeding can be used if a prisoner agrees to it, or if the detainee is ruled unable to make a competent decision and left no unpressured advance instructions refusing it, according to the WMA.
The hunger strike, which is now into its 12th week, has upped the pressure on Washington to shut what US President Barack Obama has called a legal "no man's land".
On Tuesday, Mr Obama vowed to renew a push to close the prison, saying he did not want any inmates to die and urging Congress to help him find a long-term solution that would allow for prosecuting terror suspects while closing Guantanamo.
The inmates are protesting their indefinite detention without charges or trials at the facility, which was set up by his predecessor, George W Bush, to hold those captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
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