By M. J. Friedrich
3 August 2011
When antigovernment protesters marched in February and March of this year on the streets of Manama, the capital of Bahrain, peacefully calling for political and economic reforms, a brutal response by the country’s security services followed.
By M. J. Friedrich
3 August 2011
When antigovernment protesters marched in February and March of this year on the streets of Manama, the capital of Bahrain, peacefully calling for political and economic reforms, a brutal response by the country’s security services followed.
The majority of the injured and dead were brought to Salmaniya Hospital in Manama. Rather than being a safe haven for the wounded, however, this facility, the largest modern medical facility in the country, was declared by the government to be a stronghold of opposition protesters. Security forces occupied the building. According to human rights organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), patients were beaten and abused. Physicians, nurses, and other health care workers who treated the civilian protesters were systematically abducted, detained, and interrogated, and many now are facing trial for allegedly using the hospital as a base to try to overthrow the royal government.
Several human rights organizations such as PHR and Doctors Without Borders have reported abuses against patients and health care workers.
Richard Sollom, MA, MPH, deputy director at PHR and forensic pathologist Nizam Peerwain, MD, chief medical examiner, Tarrant County, Texas, carried out medical evaluations of torture survivors and spoke with people who witnessed physician abductions. They described their findings in a report released by PHR in April, Do No Harm: A Call for Bahrain to End Systematic Attacks on Doctors and Patients (
https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/bahrain-22April_4-45pm.pdf). The report also documents the use of medical transport for military purposes, the destruction of medical facilities and medical records, and the obstruction of medical care and treatment.
When reports about the injured protesters hit the international media, Sollom said, the Bahraini government put its own spin on the information, claiming that physicians were instigating political unrest, fomenting violence, turning the hospital into a political headquarters, and depriving thousands of people of treatment.
Many of the physicians targeted are the country’s leading medical specialists, physicians with 20 to 30 years of experience and impeccable medical credentials, said Sollom. “It strains credulity to believe that these physicians would suddenly, out of the blue, start deliberately harming patients rather than helping them, as Bahrain’s government has alleged,” he said.
At press time, dozens of physicians, nurses, and paramedics who were arrested for treating protesters were on trial before a military court. The government’s use of a military trial for these cases calls into question whether the rights of the accused can be adequately protected. Families of the defendants have reported to PHR and other human rights organizations that the defendants have been tortured and forced to sign false confessions in detention.
Sollom noted that he and other human rights observers speculate that the Bahraini government has systematically targeted physicians and other health care professionals because these caregivers, who treated protesters taken to the hospital, have firsthand evidence of the excessive force used by the government security forces. “This is one of the most egregious sets of violations of medical neutrality and breaches of international law that I’ve seen personally and we as an organization have seen in decades,” said Sollom. Medical neutrality refers to the ethical duty of medical professionals to care for and treat those in need without regard to race, religion, or political affiliation and to have a neutral and safe space provided by the state to carry out their work.
It is important for those in the medical community in the United States and other countries to fully appreciate what is happening in Bahrain and to speak out against the violation of medical principles, said Susanna Sirkin, MEd, deputy director at PHR. Imagine reporting for work in the midst of a crisis, she said, trying to deal with large numbers of injured people pouring into your hospital, only to be charged with outrageous allegations, denied access to lawyers, or whisked away from your family and kept in prison for months to face trial and possibly a life sentence.
The response from the international health care community has been quite powerful, with many nations and health care associations calling for Bahrain to respect medical neutrality and either to throw out the charges against the physicians and nurses on trial or, at the very least, to ensure a fair trial.
These Bahraini health care professionals are relying on the international medical response to save their lives, said Sirkin.
The World Medical Association (WMA) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) issued a joint statement in June calling on Bahraini authorities to ensure fair trials for health care workers. Mukesh Haikerwal, AO, professor in the School of Medicine at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, and chair of the council of the WMA, said the WMA is asking all its member associations to issue similar condemnations of this treatment, not as a political statement but in support of the human rights of health care professionals.
“In a civilized society, health care professionals have a very important role in the healing and recovery of a nation in trouble,” said Haikerwal. “While personally I don’t think these men and women ever should have come to trial in the first place, we need to stand back and call for a fair and open trial,” he said. “The neutrality and independence of these professionals should be respected. This could happen anywhere, to any of our compatriots doing humanitarian work, and they must be protected.”
Haikerwal said that at the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May, Bahrain’s Acting Minister of Health, Fatima Al-Beloushi, EdD, EdM, MA, gave a spirited defense of the regime. “She basically denied that there were any abuses, a patently false assertion,” he said.
David Benton, CEO of the ICN, met with Al-Beloushi at the assembly and said that she told him that the Bahraini government was surprised and concerned about the level of international interest in the situation. International pressure may be having some effect, he said, given that Bahrain has allowed a few international observers to attend the trials.
“Until recently Bahrain has been one of the peaceful countries in the region, a gateway of sorts to the area and one visited regularly by tourists,” said Benton. Continued scrutiny could affect the economy, providing more leverage to address the situation, he said.
In May, Bahrain’s King Hamad lifted the 2-month state of emergency. But while a number of physicians have been released and some of the missing have reappeared, this does not mean that Bahrain has been responsive to all the requests, appeals, and demands of the international community, said PHR’s Sirkin.
The US government has exerted some pressure on its long-term ally, which is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. In early June, President Obama met with Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, who, while not in charge, is considered a progressive member of the royal family who is in favor of a national dialogue to resolve the crisis in his country.
The American Medical Association recently provided a sample letter for US physicians to use to write to Bahraini officials and urge for the fair treatment of the health care professionals detained in Bahrain (
http://tinyurl.com/69v45yh).
PHR’s Sollom noted that his organization is in touch with contacts in Bahrain who report that medical professionals are still being targeted. PHR continues to name people who have been targeted because the appearance of their names in the media provides them some protection. A list of names can be found at the PHR Web site.
Sollom returned from Libya in June and is preparing a report on violations of medical neutrality there as well as war crimes in general. He pointed out that although in Bahrain, there’s been a systematic attack on health professionals as individuals, in Libya attacks are focusing on hospitals and medical transport, but not on individual health care workers.
“But there are indiscriminate attacks on civilians that are war crimes, and we’ve documented allegations of rape in Libya, torture, mass disappearances, and detention, all of which will be coming out in our report sometime in late July, I hope,” said Sollom.
Human Rights Report Details Violence Against Health Care Workers in Bahrain