Bahrain’s Continuing War on Doctors - By Rula al-Saffar | Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/10/bahrains_continuing_war_on_doctors?page=full
Au Bahreïn, le respect du serment d’Hippocrate est criminalisé (et pire encore.)
When it began, I knew that it was my duty as a nurse to help. So I made my way to Salmaniya Medical Complex, Bahrain’s only public hospital, to do what I could to aid the overwhelmed staff, even though I did not work there myself. What I witnessed was horrifying: Evidence of the use of live ammunition, bodies battered by tear gas canisters fired at close range, and protesters blinded by the use of bird shot. In the months that closely followed, nearly 50 people were killed as a direct result of the violence against protesters, a number which has risen to over 100 since 2011.
As a healthcare professional, it was my duty to aid the injured. But as a witness to the Bahraini security forces’ violent response to the peaceful protests, I also felt a duty to speak out against the abuses. Many of my colleagues who felt the same way spoke on the record with the media to describe the types of injuries they had seen, shedding light on the nature of the government’s brutality. After authorities barred ambulances from bringing injured protesters to Salmaniya Medical Complex, we joined in protests to demand that the wounded have access to the hospital and care.
As health care professionals, we felt a need to speak out against violations of medical neutrality. The government felt a need to silence us. And so in response to exercising our right to free speech, security forces attacked medics and brought Salmaniya hospital under military occupation. To justify their actions, the Ministry of Interior and state-controlled media falsely reported that healthcare workers were refusing to treat injured security forces. The truth is much more appalling: Security forces occupying Salmaniya hospital used their proximity to medical workers and patients to gather information about protesters. The sixth floor of the facility was used to interrogate patients, many of whom were suffering from severe injuries. As a result, patients with sometimes life-threatening injuries were afraid to seek treatment out of fear of being interrogated, or worse, by government security forces. It was these sorts of egregious actions by the government that my colleagues and I sought to expose. In turn, we soon became the targets of government brutality ourselves.
In March 2011, the Bahrain government began detaining and interrogating healthcare workers. On April 4, in response to a summons, I presented myself to the Bahrain Central Investigation Department for questioning on my role in the uprising. While in detention, I was given electric shocks to my head and face, and threatened with rape . What happened to me also happened to dozens of other medics. Since the uprising, 82 medical professionals have been arrested on a variety of politically-motivated charges meant to intimidate citizens from speaking out against the government’s abuses. Their stories of receiving physical and emotional abuse were documented in a report released in May 2012 by Physicians for Human Rights.
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