Bahrain's Assault on Medical Professionals

Bahrain's doctors, nurses and emergency workers treated scores of injured and saw the dead after security forces launched a brutal crackdown on protestors. Many are now paying a steep price for speaking out about what they witnessed. After traveling to Bahrain as part of an Amnesty International fact-finding mission earlier this year, Dr. Hani Mowafi, co-director of the Boston Medical Center Department of Public and Global Health, observed the country's deteriorating human rights situation with great concern. The mission took place just days after at least seven protestors were killed and dozens more injured in a brutal crackdown on protests by activists demanding greater social and political rights from the country's monarchy. The government has sought to cast the protests in a sectarian light; Bahrain is a Sunni monarchy ruling a majority Shi'a population. Shi'a doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who cared for the injured--and spoke out about the violence they witnessed--insisted they did so as a matter of conscience. Many have since been arrested, detained and persecuted.

In late September, a military court took seven minutes to declare twenty doctors and medical professionals from the Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) guilty of attempting to topple the government and imposed prison sentences of up to fifteen years. The medical professionals were accused of using the SMC- the leading tertiary care center on the island and the hospital closest to the Pearl Roundabout, where the most egregious violence took place- as a "control center" for protests, inciting hatred of the regime, occupying the hospital by force, stealing medicine and stockpiling arms. Other military trials that same week upheld guilty verdicts and harsh jail terms-including life sentences-for human rights activists, opposition leaders and teachers on charges related to the February and March protests. The trials have marred Bahrain's image as an oasis of stability and cosmopolitanism in a turbulent region.

Click here for more on Amnesty Internationa's Bahrain fact-finding mission.