Bahrain’s Medical Underground treats abused and injured victims of violence by regime, as imprisoned Medics await trial in court of injustice

Secret Clinics Tend to Bahrain’s Wounded
By KAREEM FAHIM – 21 May, 2012

MANAMA, Bahrain — Three young men were slumped on a living room mat, groaning with pain from nuggets of birdshot lodged in a cheek, a forehead and under the lid of an eye.

Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, 46, and his wife, Dr. Zahra al-Samar, were jailed last year for treating protesters. “They’ve destroyed the health services in the whole country,” Dr. Dhaif said.

Bahrain’s nightly protests had exacted their reliable toll.

Friends dragged the men away from the clashes and the riot police, to a safe house nearby. Soon, it was time to go, but not to a hospital: the police were there, too. “No one goes to the hospital,” one protester said.

Instead, the men traveled to one of dozens of houses that are scattered throughout this island nation, where a secret and growing network of caregivers — doctors, first-aid medics or people with no medical experience at all — wait daily for the casualties from the protests. The houses are not really field hospitals, but rather sitting rooms, often equipped with nothing more than bandages and gauze.

For the injured protesters, the houses have replaced the country’s largest public hospital, the Salmaniya Medical Complex, which has been a crucial site in the conflict between Bahrain’s ruling monarchy and its opponents since the beginning of a popular uprising in February 2011. Activists say that because of a heavy security presence at the hospital, protesters — or people fearful of being associated with Bahrain’s opposition — have been afraid to venture there for more than a year. That reluctance, officials and activists say, may be responsible for several deaths.

Last spring, the hospital became a symbol of the state’s repression, as the government arrested — and in some cases tortured — protesters, doctors and nurses for their involvement with the uprising. As its problems persist, Salmaniya has come to represent Bahrain’s dangerous impasse, marked by a growing rift between the country’s Shiite majority, which has long complained of official discrimination, and the Sunni political elite.

The authorities continue to prosecute Shiite doctors who worked at the hospital on charges including plotting to overthrow the government. Some of the doctors say their arrests represented a purge of Shiites, allowing the government to replace them with Sunni loyalists.

A report released Monday by Physicians for Human Rights says some of the current problems at Salmaniya stem from the conduct of security forces in the hospital and at its gates. People interviewed by the group said guards stopped arriving cars and questioned the passengers. They asked what village they were from, a way of telling whether someone was Shiite or Sunni.

People with physical injuries, including those possibly related to the impact of tear-gas canisters, are brought inside for additional interrogation. The report said that the hospital’s chief executive, Dr. Waleed Khalifa al-Manea, had urged the Interior Ministry, which oversees security at Salmaniya, to stop the practice. …more