Rapper Mos Def submitted to a controversial force feeding procedure as a form of protest, experiencing what hunger striking Guantanamo Bay prisoners are subject to to prevent their starvation in a graphic new video.
Mos Def’s force feeding protest was filmed and has since been ricocheting around the web, after the UK’s Guardian carried the shocking and disturbing footage of the rapper and actor enduring the daily plight of Guantanamo prisoners.
The clip is prefaced by the following explanation of Mos Def’s force feeding experience:
“As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure.”
In the highly disturbing clip, Mos Def is strapped to a chair before a tube is inserted (seemingly inflicting significant discomfort and pain) in his nose, eliciting a series of gagging and sobs as the procedure begins.
Quickly, the rapper is crying and begging the technicians to stop the force feeding procedure, pleading:
Please. Please please please please please, don’t don’t don’t … No! This is me, stop, I can’t do this!
Still shaken, Mos Def recalls the force feeding experience, saying:
“The first part of it is not that bad, but then you get this burning … Then it just starts to be really unbearable. It feels like something is going in—like something is going into my brain.”
The procedure Mos Def and his collaborators shined a light upon typically takes two full hours to complete, and 44 of Guantanamo Bay’s 120 prisoners are hunger striking — and ostensibly being forced to submit to similar force feeding interventions daily.
