HRW urges Bahrain to end attacks on medics, patients linked to protests

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HRW urges Bahrain to end attacks on medics, patients linked to protests

July 18, 2011 01:36:05 pm

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] on Monday urged [press release] the Bahraini government to end systematic attacks on injured patients and stop arresting medical professionals linked to recent anti-government protests. In a 54-page report [text, PDF] entitled “Targets of Retribution: Attacks against Medics, Injured Protesters, and Health Facilities,” HRW presents evidence that Bahraini authorities have attacked health care providers, denied medical access to protesters injured by security forces, seized hospitals and health centers, and detained, mistreated, tortured and prosecuted medical professionals and patients. Documentation of the abuses began on February 17, when protestors and bystanders were attacked by government security forces during what HRW described as largely peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. The invasion and capture of medical facilities has left injured protestors without necessary medical attention and exacerbated their conditions, HRW reported. Joe Stork, Deputy Middle East Director at HRW, contends that the systematic attacks are unfounded and constitute efforts to exact revenge on protestors:

The attacks on medics and wounded protesters have been part of an official policy of retribution against Bahrainis who supported pro-democracy protests. Medical personnel who criticized the severe repression were singled out and jailed, among the more than 1,600 Bahrainis facing solitary confinement and ill-treatment in detention and unfair trials before a special military court. Officials justify the government’s crackdown and the arrests of the medics by alleging that they violated the principle of medical neutrality and committed heinous crimes. Yet they have failed to provide any convincing evidence that their actions are anything but a campaign of retribution aimed at silencing government critics.

The Bahraini government alleges that actions by protesters and medical staff compelled security and military forces to intervene. According to the report, over 30 people have died during the protest aftermath.

A Bahrain court arraigned 47 doctors and nurses [JURIST report] in June on charges of trying to overthrow the government and participating in illegal demonstrations when they helped treat injured protesters at the Salmaniya Medical Complex [official website], a state-run center in Bahrain’s capital, Manama. Human rights organizations including HRW and Doctors Without Borders (DWB) [advocacy websites], in April, criticized [JURIST report] Bahrain for rampant human rights abuses related to anti-government protests. In March, six opposition leaders were arrested [JURIST report] in Bahrain after the government, backed by foreign troops from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) [official website], violently dispersed protesters in Manana. Days earlier, Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa [official website] declared a three-month state of emergency [JURIST report] in response to growing unrest in the island nation. The state of emergency came just days after a group of 22 Bahraini lawmakers, part of an independent pro-government bloc, called on the King to impose martial law [JURIST report] under articles 36 and 123 of the Bahraini Constitution [text, PDF]. Also in March, the member states of the GCC, which includes Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE, deployed troops to Bahrain [BBC report] for the purpose of guarding oil installations and financial institutions. The Bahraini government’s response to the ongoing protests have prompted international concern. In February, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] called for an end to violence against protesters [JURIST report] in the country, referencing attempts to quell protests sweeping across the region.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.