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Artist News
Mos Def undergoes Guantanamo Bay force feeding procedure
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 9 July 2013
Currently 120 inmates in America’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp are on hunger strike, 44 of whom are currently being force fed. In a bid to raise awareness of this process, being carried out on people who, in many cases, are being held without charge, rapper and actor Mos Def, or Yasiin Bey as he is now known, agreed to undergo the same force-feeding procedure as that carried out in the prison for Human Rights organisation Reprieve.
Those inmates who are fed by force go through this process twice per day, and it can take up to two hours to complete. In the short film, Bey lasts only a few minutes before calling it to a halt (something inmates are, of course, unable to do). Afterwards, he says: “I really didn’t know what to expect. When the tube went in, the first part of it is not that bad, but then you get this burning and then it starts to be really unbearable and feels like something was going into my brain. Then it reached the back of my throat and I just had to… I really couldn’t take it”.
For more on the current conditions in Guantanamo Bay, have a listen to this report from a recent edition of US radio show ‘This American Life’, and watch the video of Bey undergoing the force feeding procedure (which, we should warn, you may find distressing) below:
