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NEWS > EVERYONE ELSE > SYRIAN HOSPITALS ACCUSED OF TORTURE, BAD FOOD, RUDENESS
SYRIAN HOSPITALS ACCUSED OF TORTURE, BAD FOOD, RUDENESS
October 27 2011
Damascus, Syria – There is an assumption by some people that the situation in Syria has become a bit overblown. While there is no doubt that the situation there is serious, it is not quite at the level of the worst days of the Libyan conflict which threatened to tip over into genocide. In Syria, protestors continue to battle, and the government continues to fight back but there has been no evidence of cruelty outside that conflict, until now.
According to Amnesty International, a number of Syrian hospitals have actually started to aid the cause for the government, engaging in torture and acting on behalf of the government with wounded protestors. That, along with already terrible conditions at many Syrian hospitals related to food and overly aggressive nursing, has made a place of peace and healing into a new nightmare for protestors and a growing problem for the protest movement as a whole.
“It is deeply alarming that the Syrian authorities seem to have given the security forces a free rein in hospitals, and that in many cases hospital staff appear to have taken part in torture and ill treatment of the very people they are supposed to care for,” said a spokesperson for Amnesty International. “The staff at these hospitals have become instruments of repression, torturing patients and providing them with very poor treatment. For many of the protest victims, that treatment is even worse and there is no sign that anyone is willing to make improvements.”
Many of the protestors are being fed leftovers from other patients, in addition to physical torture and mental abuse.
Syria has one of the worst hospital food services in the Middle East according to a recent UN study of the region.
“It really is a shame when a place like a hospital becomes a new arm of the government oppression. Hospitals should remain independent, dedicated to helping the sick and injured regardless of their political views and actions. Hospitals should always be neutral, but that is obviously not the case here,” said Scrape TV Middle East analyst David Gershwin. “Or it could be. I mean lousy food is common in hospitals in general and things like beating and torturing patients, well that isn’t totally unheard of either, at least not in Syria. It could well be that because of the high profile more cases of such incidents are being revealed, but that doesn’t mean that more incidents are actually happening.”
Nurses in Syria have had a reputation in the past for being very rude. It’s not clear if those incidents are on the increase as a result of the protests, nor whether such an increase is due to government pressure or just having more patients in the facilities.
“There has to be a margin of forgiveness here, to be totally fair to the hospital people.
They are under a great deal of pressure dealing with a lot more patients and that is going to fry nerves. What may seem like, on the surface, as torture may in fact just be stress in a lot of cases and that has to be considered,” continued Gershwin. “Look, lots of abuse goes on in Syria, no doubt, but part of that is cultural and has to be forgiven. The food, well there will be food shortages with so many patients and so sharing is not unreasonable. I would bet that the percentage of tortured people in hospitals is about the same as it always was, but reporting is up and that makes it look bad.”
Torture related deaths in hospital have shown no increase since the protests began.
Emil Uliya, International Correspondent
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