The Independent reports:
The intimidation and detention of doctors treating dying and injured pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain is revealed today in a series of chilling emails obtained by The Independent.
At least 32 doctors, including surgeons, physicians, paediatricians and obstetricians, have been arrested and detained by Bahrain’s police in the last month in a campaign of intimidation that runs directly counter to the Geneva Convention guaranteeing medical care to people wounded in conflict. Doctors around the world have expressed their shock and outrage.
One doctor, an intensive care specialist, was held after she was photographed weeping over a dead protester. Another was arrested in the theatre room while operating on a patient.
Many of the doctors, aged from 33 to 65, have been “disappeared” – held incommunicado or at undisclosed locations. Their families do not know where they are. Nurses, paramedics and ambulance staff have also been detained.
Emails between a Bahraini surgeon and a British colleague, seen by The Independent, describe in vivid detail the threat facing medical staff as they struggle to treat victims of the violence. They provide a glimpse of the terror and exhaustion suffered by the doctors and medical staff.
Bahraini government forces backed by Saudi Arabian troops have cracked down hard on demonstrators since the unrest began on 15 February – and the harshness of their response has now been extended to those treating the injured.
The author of the emails, a senior surgeon at the Salmaniya Medical Complex, Bahrain’s main civil hospital, was taken in for questioning at the headquarters of the interior ministry in Manama. He never re-emerged. No reason has been given for his arrest, nor has there been any news of his condition.
In a series of emails, passed on in the hope of drawing attention to the plight of he and his colleagues, the surgeon describes appalling scenes at Salmaniya hospital, with staff being threatened and detained in increasing numbers for treating injured democracy protesters.
Good to see some non-Libyan pieces making it through.
The Bahraini government has also attacked two Shiite Mosques in an attempt to stoke religious tensions.
News Coverage of Mosque attack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACKskuYUqt4&NR=1
Article on the Mosque attack: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24390
Also kind of linked to that is Nir Rosen’s great 2 part article on the current state of sectarianism in the Middle East and a possible Sunni – Shiite War.
Part 1: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1254/prospects-for-the-sectarian-terrain-%28part-i%29
Part 2: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1268/prospects-for-the-sectarian-terrain-%28part-ii%29
Also on Syria, Prof Joshua Landis has an interview on BloggingHeads with a Syrian activist about the protests there which is fairly interesting.
Link: http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=9259
You people don’t know anything about what happened in Bahrain, Geneva Convention guarantee medical facilities wont be used as an operation centre for conducting terrorist acts, or war, the hospital was used just for that, the medical staff who were arrested were running a torture hose for non Shiites, don’t just listen to one side, u need to get the government side too, they have videos which were filmed by these so called medical staff as the committed crimes against humanity , all the arrests made were based on evidence proving how theses terrorist preformed unnecessary operations (cutting people open) for the filming and to use it to show that they are suffering at the government hands, some of these people died in the process, there are a lot of thing you people don’t know or may you don’t want to know, if you want the truth u come over and talk to all the Bahrainis not only those you call prodemocracy protesters, they got nothing to do with democracy at all, THEY ARE TERRORISTS.