Bahrain:HRW: Bahrain Targets Medical Staff

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Human Rights Watch has urged the Bahraini authorities to halt a "systematic campaign to intimidate doctors and other medical staff suspected of sympathizing with recent anti-government protests."

The New York-based rights group said on Monday that "more than 70 medics have been arrested since March in a crackdown that followed unrest in Bahrain. Forty-eight medical staff are currently on trial, charged with inciting attempts to overthrow the ruling al-Khalifa family and other offences under Bahraini law."
The report alleges that "security forces targeted doctors and nurses who were treating injured Bahrainis during the anti-government uprisings earlier this year and that the abuse and intimidation is continuing despite the suppression of the protests."

"The Bahraini government's violent campaign of intimidation against the medical community and its interference in the provision of vital medical assistance to injured protesters is one of the most egregious aspects of its brutal repression," Human Rights Watch said in a report and open letter to the government.
The 54-page report, "Targets of Retribution: Attacks against Medics, Injured Protesters, and Health Facilities,""documents serious government abuses, starting in mid-February 2011. These include attacks on health care providers; denial of medical access to protesters injured by security forces; the siege of hospitals and health centers; and the detention, ill-treatment, torture, and prosecution of medics and patients with protest-related injuries.

"The attacks on medics and wounded protesters have been part of an official policy of retribution against Bahrainis who supported pro-democracy protests," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "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."

Although the Bahraini authorities have denied that they are targeting members of the medical community, al-Khalifas' authorities accused doctors and others treating demonstrators with carrying weapons and working to topple the regime.
The government responded to the youth-driven protests by forcibly clearing the Pearl "martyrs" roundabout, the rallying point of the demonstrations. More than 30 people died as a result of the violent unrest in February and March. Nearby Salmaniya hospital, where many of the medics now on trial worked, was another focal point of the unrest.

The Human Rights Watch report was released after Wefaq, Bahrain's largest Shia opposition group, said on Sunday it was withdrawing from a "national dialogue" set up by the government.

Source: News Agencies