Statement on Arrest and Imprisonment of Bahraini Medical Professionals

[Bahraini health workers protest attacks on doctors in 2011. Image by Mazen Mahdi via Wikimedia Commons] [Bahraini health workers protest attacks on doctors in 2011. Image by Mazen Mahdi via Wikimedia Commons]

Statement on Arrest and Imprisonment of Bahraini Medical Professionals

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights on 3 October 2012.] 

On 2 October 2012, six medical professionals and human rights defenders were arrested in Bahrain following early morning raids on their homes. Their arrests came a day after the Court of Cassation in Manama upheld the prison sentences of nine doctors and nurses for the legitimate exercise of their profession and their right to freedom of expression during last year’s protests.

Dr. Ali Al-Ekri, a senior consultant paediatric orthopaedic surgeon, initially arrested from the operating theatre of Salmaniya hospital last year, was sentenced to five years in prison for "possession and concealment" of weapons and "illegal assembly." Mr. Ibrahim Al-Demistani was sentenced to three years in prison, Dr. Ghassan Dhaif  and Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji to one year in prison, and Dr. Mahmoud Asghar and Ms. Dheya Ibrahim Abu Idris were sentenced to six and two months respectively. They were convicted on unsubstantiated charges, including promoting the change of the political regime by force, instigating sectarian hatred, and the illegal detention of persons.

The six medical professionals were among those arrested and detained in 2011 because they provided medical assistance to pro-reform protestors, who had sustained injuries during the protests at the hands of Bahraini police, and had spoken out about the injuries, which they had seen. The trials of the medical professionals were in breach of international fair trial standards. Furthermore, while in detention they were subjected to torture and ill-treatment as documented in the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) report and their families were threatened.  Following international public outcry, the six were released on bail pending the appeal before the civil courts which delivered its verdict on 1 October 2012.

These arrests come in the context of an ongoing crackdown on medical professionals. Dr Ahmed Al-Mushatat and Dr Hassan Matooq have been in detention since 2011 and are serving two and three year sentences, respectively, on similar baseless charges. 

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) expresses serious concern at the sentencing, arrest and detention of Dr. Ali Al-Ekri, Mr. Ibrahim Al-Demistani Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji, Dr. Mahmoud Asghar, Ms. Dheya Ibrahim Abu Idris, Dr Ahmed Al-Mushtat and Dr Hassan Matooq. The GCHR believes that the charges against them are unfounded and are directly related to the legitimate exercise of their profession and their right to freedom of expression.

The GCHR calls on the authorities in Bahrain to:

  1. Immediately and unconditionally release Dr. Ali Al-Ekri, Mr. Ibrahim Al-Demistani, Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji, Dr. Mahmoud Asghar, Ms. Dheya Ibrahim Abu Idris, Dr Ahmed A-Mushatat and Dr Hassan Matooq and all human rights defenders detained as a result of their human rights work;
  2. Take all necessary measures to guarantee the physical and psychological integrity and security of Dr. Ali Al-Ekri, Mr. Ibrahim Al-Demistani Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji, Dr. Mahmoud Asghar, Ms. Dheya Ibrahim Abu Idris, Dr Ahmed Al-Mushatat, and Dr Hassan Matooq while they remain in detention;
  3. Guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in Bahrain are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions including judicial harassment. 

The GCHR respectfully reminds you that the United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1998, recognises the legitimacy of the activities of human rights defenders, their right to freedom of association and to carry out their activities without fear of reprisals. We would particularly draw your attention to Article 6 (b): “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others: (b) As provided for in human rights and other applicable international instruments, freely to publish, impart or disseminate to others views, information and knowledge on all human rights and fundamental freedoms; and Article 12 (2): The State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration.”

 

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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