ThePost.ie
03 July 2011 By Susan Mitchell
When the King of Bahrain made a speech last Thursday, some were hopeful that the doctors arrested in the Gulf nation would receive a royal pardon.
It was not to be. Instead they still stand accused of serious charges which could result in their being executed.
Their story has been followed by the world’s media, but has a particular resonance in Ireland, as three of the Bahraini doctors, who were arbitrarily detained, trained at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
ThePost.ie
03 July 2011 By Susan Mitchell
When the King of Bahrain made a speech last Thursday, some were hopeful that the doctors arrested in the Gulf nation would receive a royal pardon.
It was not to be. Instead they still stand accused of serious charges which could result in their being executed.
Their story has been followed by the world’s media, but has a particular resonance in Ireland, as three of the Bahraini doctors, who were arbitrarily detained, trained at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
The doctors were held incommunicado, reportedly tortured, denied access to their families for two months and forced to confess under duress. Front Line, a human rights defence organisation, said they had never before ‘‘witnessed doctors and nurses persecuted on such a scale as a result of their legitimate humanitarian actions’’.
In recent months, the RCSI, which has a €70 million college in Bahrain, has come in for sustained criticism over its failure to deliver a hard-hitting message to the ruling al-Khalifa family and vindicate the rights of fellow health professionals.
The RCSI generates annual revenues of €108 million, but its operations go much further than a medical school. It controls a substantial property portfolio in Dublin and has a significant overseas presence, particularly in the Middle East and Asia.
The college’s most significant overseas play has been in oil-rich Bahrain, where it runs the Medical University of Bahrain. In 2008, the college opened a university building on the Bahrain campus. It was reported that it spent €70 million, but the RCSI refused to verify this.
The RCSI also has the contract to manage the King Hamad General Hospital, but it refused to disclose what this contract was worth when contacted by this newspaper.
In conjunction with the Ministry of Finance in Bahrain and a Kuwaiti finance house, the Irish college is also a partner in the RCSI Bahrain health campus, a $500 million medical education and healthcare campus.
RCSI’s finances
The RCSI’s detractors claim medical cowardice has been fuelled by the college’s financial concerns.
The college denied that financial concerns were behind its failure to speak out about the arrest of medics after pro-democracy demonstrations in March.
The RCSI refused to condemn the arrests for three months. In the meantime, medical organisations worldwide – including Physicians for Human Rights, the American College of Physicians, England’s Royal College of Surgeons, the National Arab American Medical Association and the American Medical Association – petitioned the Crown Prince of Bahrain to stop attacking hospitals, patients and doctors.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) came out with a hard-hitting statement, but other Irish medical organisations – including the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland (RCPI) were silent.
The RCSI has taken the most flak because of its particularly close links with, and strong presence in, Bahrain.
‘‘It is unprecedented in history to have so many doctors on trial. Human rights should not be up for debate.
The college’s behaviour has been quite inappropriate and it has shown no solidarity whatsoever with the families of these doctors,” said Dublin-based orthopaedic surgeon Professor Damian McCormack, who trained a number of the detained Bahraini doctors.
McCormack believes the RCSI’s financial exposure in Bahrain and the write-down of its large property portfolio in Ireland are behind the college’s stance.
‘‘It is in Nama territory and, yes, pulling out of Bahrain may well bankrupt the college, but at least it would not be morally bankrupt,” McCormack said.
McCormack has been agitating for the Bahraini doctors in the Irish media and said he had received good support from most of his colleagues.
He said responsibility for the RCSI’s position rested with the governing body of the RCSI – its council. That is composed of 21 surgeons and it is understood that some members are unhappy at the limp public response to date.
‘‘I think some of them are good guys, but are being used. Others are distracted by the glory of getting their pictures taken in gowns, first class flights to Bahrain, golf and the high-life with the ruling élite and the money they make over there, which is presumably tax free.
This is spoiling the party,” he said.
He was particularly aggrieved at the RCSI’s decision to proceed with a conferring ceremony in Bahrain on June 13 to which the Bahraini prime minister – the longest-serving unelected head in the world – was invited.
Members of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland (RCPI) also attended.
‘‘They were sitting around with senior military figures while people demonstrating for democracy are having their heads blown off down the road,” McCormack said.
It was an own goal.
Within days, Professor Eoin O’Brien wrote to the Irish Times to express his ‘‘sense of shame, indeed betrayal, at seeing the presidents of both these institutions’’ attend.
He also resigned as a fellow of the RCPI.
The criticism levelled at the RCSI and RCPI resulted in the colleges writing two letters that were published last weekend: some two months after the doctors were first arrested.
The position of the RCSI and RCPI
In his letter, RCSI chief executive Professor Cathal Kelly said the approach was ‘‘guided by what we have judged to be most effective in Bahrain. In support of this approach we have chosen to minimise public statements in Ireland’’.
The RCPI said it was clear there were ‘‘conflicting and trenchantly-held views on what actually happened in Salmaniya Hospital and the reasons for the arrest of the doctors in question’’.
While the RCPI stated that many respected international bodies, including the Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, rejected claims the doctors had refused to care for patients because of their ethnicity, some felt the RCPI had tacitly implied there was some veracity to the claims made by Bahrain’s ruling elite.
The RCPI also said it was essential that the judicial process now underway was ‘‘unequivocally fair and just’’.
‘‘I did not think much of either of the letters, particularly the one from the RCPI,” said Professor O’Brien last week.
‘‘The RCPI was almost supportive of the legal process.
We know the legal process there is corrupt.
They are kangaroo courts.
We need to tell the authorities that this is intolerable,” he said.
A source familiar with the situation in Bahrain, said the picture that was being Painted was overly simplistic.
‘‘It is a complex issue and the situation is not as simple as it is being portrayed in the media. Condemning the regime would be naive.
The RCSI is genuinely trying to use its influence behind the scenes. Cathal Kelly has been meeting with all sorts of people. If the college were to come out in an aggressive way, it could place many more people in danger,” he said.
The source said RCSI staff were mostly Shia (the country’s rulers are Sunni) and that the college wanted to keep the sectarian issues off campus. Both the RCSI and RCPI have Fellows in Bahrain who could also be endangered, he added.
He said the criticism levelled at the Irish medical schools was excessive.
‘‘Half the universities in Ireland – and the rest of the world – are trying to get into China, but there is no mention of there being a conflict in relation to China’s human rights atrocities.
The hypocrisy is beyond belief. It is all very well for the likes of Damian McCormack and Eoin O’Brien to say this that and the other. It is easy to say speak out or just walk away, but will that free the doctors?
No, it won’t.”
Bahraini authorities for their part have alleged the doctors were part of a militant Shia clique that had taken control of the hospital and used it as abase to try to overthrow the royal government during the protest that rocked the Gulf island nation earlier this year.
They were alleged to have spread false rumours and used ambulances to transport weapons, including machine guns, to protesters.
They are also accused of refusing to treat patients from Bahrain’s Sunni minority and stealing blood from the blood bank.
Doctors targeted
A trawl through BBC and al-Jazeera footage from the time of the mass protests clearly shows doctors speaking out passionately as wounded protesters were rushed into hospital.
One, Ali alAkri, struggled to hold back tears as he pleaded with the government to stop the killings.
AlAkri was identified as the main ringleader of the doctors’ conspiracy by the Bahraini prosecutor.
The BBC’s correspondent on the ground at the time was one of only two reporters allowed into court to hear the charges.
‘‘He did not look like a ringleader tome. Passionate, angry, distraught, yes. The leader of an anti-government coup?
No.
‘‘His real crime was to have spoken out to us, the foreign media, to have told the outside world what was going on inside his hospital. Of the effects of buckshot and tear gas.
To show X-rays of high-velocity bullets embedded in protesters’ bodies,” he said.
Dr al Akri and surgeons Basim Daifand Ghassan Daif studied at the RCSI.
‘‘I trained them.
They are my guys.” said Damian McCormack ‘‘While we are debating this at home the clock is ticking.
The Bahraini authorities are temporising and delaying. It is becoming more difficult to keep this in the news. I don’t believe the college has ever asked for them to be released.”
Recent developments
Last week, the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, announced the setting up of an independent commission to investigate alleged human rights abuses during the protests.
In another landmark move, he announced that all military court trials connected with the February-March protests would be moved to civilian courts.
Most of the 48 doctors and nurses arrested have been released from custody, but charges against them remain.
Last Friday, Front Line had an open letter to the King of Bahrain published in the Irish Times.
This called for the immediate dropping of all charges.
The letter was signed by 45 healthcare professionals. More doctors are reported to be signing the protest every day. ‘‘Front Line’s experience is that you need a combination of private diplomacy and public statements to effect change – particularly when private diplomacy has not achieved any concrete results.
We fully accept that the primary role of the RCSI is to educate young people to become doctors – but sadly the situation in Bahrain blew up, so they have a duty of care to those who did part of their training with the RCSI,” said Mary Lawlor, director of Front Line. She said the Ruse’s business relationship meant it was in a unique position to insist that nothing less than release of the doctors was acceptable.
‘‘The colleges are hoping this will go away. If anything happens to these doctors and nurses it would be appalling. It is indefensible for the colleges to behave like this. Moral ruin is irreparable. Financial ruin is not,” said O’Brien.