Tanya Nolan reported this story on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 12:22:00 – ABC
Download the audio report here
ELEANOR HALL: Yesterday we brought you an interview with Human Rights Watch on its report accusing the government in Bahrain of engaging in a concerted attack on the country’s medical community.
The report documents the cases of 48 medical staff who were arrested after treating protesters injured in the uprisings earlier this year.
Tanya Nolan reported this story on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 12:22:00 – ABC
Download the audio report here
ELEANOR HALL: Yesterday we brought you an interview with Human Rights Watch on its report accusing the government in Bahrain of engaging in a concerted attack on the country’s medical community.
The report documents the cases of 48 medical staff who were arrested after treating protesters injured in the uprisings earlier this year.
This morning The World Today spoke to one of the doctors charged. The doctor asked that the voice be disguised to protect their identity.
Tanya Nolan reports.
TANYA NOLAN: A doctor that served the kingdom of Bahrain for 16 years describes the moment the regime turned against them.
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: I was kidnapped from my house. I wouldn’t call it arrest because they present at my house 3am in the morning with civilian clothes, civilian cars, no identities were shown.
They were like militias or thugs. We didn’t know that they were security forces.
TANYA NOLAN: It was late March and this doctor’s first thought was that they were being rounded up for treating protesters involved in the anti-government uprisings earlier in the year.
The doctor was taken to a place they later identified as the central intelligence building in the capital Manama.
Despite knowing of other doctors and nurses also rounded up this doctor couldn’t believe their own government could be behind the secretive detention and questioning about alleged links to Iran and terrorist groups.
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: They were asking me about weapons and where do we hide the weapons.
They tried – they tried to link me to Iran and to Hezbollah and they were asking who from the United States supporting you – very weird questions. I thought it had zero relation to me.
TANYA NOLAN: Why do you think you were being held?
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: Definitely for helping treating protesters.
TANYA NOLAN: And you know this because some of your colleagues were treated in the same way? Arrested and detained without any charge?
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: Yes. Actually all of us, we were detained, arrested in the same way.
We were tortured and I think we were targeted basically because we were the first line of witnesses who witnessed the crimes of the regime and the brutality of the regime against the protesters.
TANYA NOLAN: This Shia doctor goes into more detail about the brutal treatment meted out by the Sunni regime’s security forces during nearly two months in detention.
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: They used rubber hoses to beat me all the time. They were threatening me with rape. I was not allowed to sleep, not even for one hour.
TANYA NOLAN: It was the signing of a confession while blindfolded that secured the doctors’ release.
To add to the indignity, the group of 48 were forced to appear on national television and admit to crimes including links to Iran, stealing hospital equipment and causing the deaths of patients.
But it’s the charges of inciting the protesters to overthrow the regime that are most serious in a country that doesn’t tolerate dissent and still hands out the death penalty.
This doctor is one of the hundreds of the hundreds of protesters, opposition leaders, lawyers and other medical professionals to be charged and detained since the imposition of emergency rule in March.
Their fate is largely unknown. The media has been banned from covering their military trials.
However in a small sign of hope the military trials scheduled against the 48 medicos accused have now been moved to the civilian courts, something this doctor believes is a result of the increasing international attention on the actions of the regime.
But this doctor questions how a trial can be fair when it’s based on trumped up charges.
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: Our verdicts are already subjugated, already (inaudible).
It I think it’s political decision rather than – because if you go back to there’s no crimes against us. There is no way to prove that we were holding weapons and it’s all like the fabrication of the regime against us.
TANYA NOLAN: For now this doctor lives in limbo, released from detention but unable to work, unallowed to travel and prohibited from speaking to the media – the only thing they can pin their small hopes on.
BAHRAINI DOCTOR: The worst, it’s not coming to us, it’s coming to every Bahraini. They’re just suppressing us and trying to attack and target every Shia who are in here.
Unless there is sense and justice here that things will not be corrected.
ELEANOR HALL: That’s a Bahraini doctor charged for treating protesters involved in the anti-government uprisings earlier this year. Tanya Nolan with that report.