Statement by Bahraini Medics Sentenced on 29th September 2011

Statement by Bahraini Medics Sentenced on 29th September 2011

Statement by Bahraini Medics Sentenced on 29th September 2011

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by Bahraini medics in Arabic and English on 29 September 2011. It was recently published on Bahrain Online.]



Statement by Bahraini Medics sentenced on 29th September 2011:

On September 29, 2011, a group of 20 Medics was sentenced in the Bahrain National Safety Court, a military court, to between five and 15 years in prison each. During the times of unrest in Bahrain, we honored our medical oath to treat the wounded and save lives. And as a result, we are being rewarded with unjust and harsh sentences. Thirteen Bahraini medics out of 20 received a sentence of 15 years in prison. The charges that we have being accused of are absolutely ludicrous. We are highly professional and experienced medics and specialists, and we categorically deny all charges against us. 

This is the first time in the history of medicine that the medical profession has been attacked on such a large scale by any government.

Our ordeal began in mid‐March when some of us were first abducted, detained for up to 6 months before we were released in early‐September on bail. All of us were subject to maltreatment, humiliation and violence. Most of us experienced severe forms of psychological and physical abuse during interrogation. We were coerced into making false confessions and some of these were video‐taped by the authorities. We believe that the whole point was to punish, intimidate and degrade us during our detention. Our sentences were a fait accompli! The government and the military judge had made up their minds that we were guilty and our sentences were preordained. The trials we have been going through are nothing but a playing card in a game of politics. The 40 defense witnesses who appeared in court did not make any difference to the judge and his verdict. We believe that the message the government is trying to deliver to the people of Bahrain and to the world through our case is that treating wounded protesters is a crime, and telling the stories of what we witnessed in the media is an even larger crime.



We have been denied the basic right to a fair trial. Most of the evidence presented to the judges in court relied on forced confessions and ‘secret sources.’ The military court heard from 26 defense witnesses, but the judges did not seem to take into account the evidence provided by any of them. The marks and bruises on the bodies of the detained medics was sufficient evidence of torture and maltreatment. But when the lawyers and their defendants tried to deliver this evidence in court, their request was denied by the judge. That is only one example showing the unfair treatment the doctors experienced.



After we were all set free on bail by September 7, we did not talk about the pain and the suffering we endured while in detention in the hope that our release would be a turning point and the means to pave the way for the charges to be dropped. This turned out to be a mistake on our part. The blanket nature of the sentencing proves that these verdicts were preordained and politically motivated. And no longer will we keep quiet.



We condemn the local media’s fabrications to distort the events that occurred inside the hospital during the unrest and tarnish the image of professional medical workers who worked tirelessly to treat the sick and wounded. 

We are a group of professional doctors, nurses and paramedics who have worked hard over many years to reach the highest standards in the medical profession. We are proud to have served the needs of all communities across Bahrain. Our only crime was that during the unrest earlier this year we were outspoken witnesses to the bloodshed and the brutal treatment by the security forces. We tried our best to provide medical care to all of those who entered Salmaniya Medical Hospital ‐ the main hospital in the country and other places across Bahrain. And as a result, we are now paying a heavy price.

We know for a fact that the international community, particularly human rights organizations and doctors all over the world followed our case closely and spoke out on our behalf when we were mistreated and silenced. We are sincerely grateful to them and to everybody who has supported us from the beginning. We have decided to break the wall of fear and take a step forward to share with the world our stories of struggle, pain and suffering. We urge you all to continue supporting our fight for justice and freedom. We pray to God Almighty that our families find the strength to make it through this difficult time, especially our children who have had to endure the unnecessary and painful absence of their parents. We would like to thank our colleagues who continue to provide health care to those who are in need, despite the extremely difficult and dangerous situation in Bahrain. We are confident that in the end justice will prevail and every free soul in this country will breathe fresh air of freedom.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412