Madam – Prof Damian McCormack’s solitary expression of concern and solidarity for the medical personnel in Salmaniya Medical Complex in Bahrain (May 6th) casts a redeeming light on the medical profession in Ireland because thus far the silence from Irish universities and hospitals where so many Bahraini medical students studied and trained has been both astonishing and depressing.
Many of those students are now working in hospitals and health centres in Bahrain where wounded pro-democracy protesters were treated for injuries inflicted by government forces. As a consequence, some have been dismissed from their posts; others have “disappeared” within the security apparatus of the state; and others have been charged with criminal activity, yet are to be tried in a military court.
These actions by the Bahraini government forces violate every tenet of the Geneva conventions and protocols, which are at the core of international humanitarian law, protecting not only the sick and wounded but also those who care for them.
Yet the Bahraini government chooses to ignore this, despite having acceded to the conventions in 1971 and to its additional protocols in 1986.
Last week, four pro-democracy protesters were convicted and sentenced to death by a military court, despite their pleas of innocence.
Will doctors and nurses who are found guilty in a military court suffer the same fate?
The investigation and report of Physicians for Human Rights about the situation of medical personnel in Bahrain makes for chilling reading. Since its publication, a number of medical associations in the United States, as well as the British Medical Association, have written to the Bahraini authorities condemning the violations of medical neutrality.
The World Medical Association has also issued a statement denouncing the attacks on medical personnel in Bahrain.
Given the fact that a great many Bahrainis did their medical studies and training in Ireland, the Irish Medical Organisation and allied medical associations here have a profound ethical obligation to express publicly their support for the right and duty of doctors, nurses and allied healthcare personnel to provide treatment to sick and wounded people in the Kingdom of Bahrain, impartially and without interference, as guaranteed by the Geneva conventions.
It is not sufficient to express regret privately behind closed doors and do nothing.
Given the grave abuses of human rights of medical personnel in Bahrain at the present time, silence is complicity. – Yours, etc,