Force-feeding
The second main issue that motivated the revision of the 1991 WMA Declaration on Hunger strikes was the re-emergence of force-feeding. This type of intervention, whereby the use of force is applied to artificially feed a hunger striker, usually via a naso-gastric tube, had not been a major issue since the nineteen seventies in Germany -- and not al all in the UK during the Hunger Strikes at Maze prison.
Most hunger strikes worldwide since the 80's never went far enough somas to have to consider any such action.
There were a few exceptions to this. In the early eighties, in the Middle East, two prisoners on hunger strike were fed forcibly, at the beginning of their protest. Naso gastric tubes were inserted forcibly into the struggling prisoners' tracheas by mistake, and in both cases the prisoners died as a consequence of liquid going into the windpipe.
The other time force-feeding made headlines was in Spain, in March of 1990, when Dr. José Ramón Muñoz in Zaragoza ordered force-feeding to be administered to detainees from the GRAPO movement, because of his own personal and religious convictions. Dr. Muñoz was assassinated by the outside relations of the prisoners' political movement.
Most recently, the issue of force-feeding has been made public and widely commented in the medical and lay press, regarding force-feeding of detainees on hunger strike held in Guantánamo Bay.
The political poster shown here protests against the force-feeding of suffragettes, deemed "political prisoners". This practice started around 1909, and continued until the start of the "Great War" (World War I), during which there was a lull in the protests.