Report – Do No Harm: A Call for Bahrain to End Systematic Attacks on Doctors and Patients

Type : Report
Title : Do No Harm: A Call for Bahrain to End Systematic Attacks on Doctors and Patients
Source : Physicians for Human Rights
Date Added: 21-Jun-2011
Publication Date : 1-Apr-2011

Thousands of protesters in the small island Kingdom of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf took to the streets calling for government reform in February and March 2011. The Government’s response was brutal and systematic: shoot civilian protesters, detain and torture them, and erase all evidence. On the frontline, treating hundreds of these wounded civilians, doctors had first-hand knowledge of government atrocities.

This report details systematic and targeted attacks against medical personnel, as a result of their efforts to provide unbiased care for wounded protestors. The assault on healthcare workers and their patients constitutes extreme violations of the principle of medical neutrality and are grave breaches of international law.

While in Bahrain, PHR investigators spoke with several eyewitnesses of abducted physicians, some of whom were ripped from their homes in the middle of the night by masked security forces. For each doctor, nurse, or medic that the government disappears, many more civilians’ lives are impacted as patients go untreated.

Physicians for Human Rights uncovered egregious abuses against patients and detainees including torture, beating, verbal abuse, humiliation, and threats of rape and killing. Our report also includes documentation of other violations of medical neutrality including the beating, abuse, and threatening of six Shi’a physicians at Salmaniya Hospital; government security forces stealing ambulances and posing as medics; the militarization of hospitals and clinics that obstruct medical care, and rampant fear that prevents patients from seeking urgent medical treatment. see report here