A Human Rights Watch report released today accuses the government in Bahrain of engaging in a concerted attack on the country's medical community.
The report alleges that security forces targeted doctors and nurses who were treating injured Bahrainis during the anti-government uprisings earlier this year and that the abuse and intimidation is continuing despite the suppression of the protests.
Tom Porteous is the deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.
He says the group witnessed the abuse first hand and that the international community should be condemning the actions of the government in Bahrain far more strongly.
He spoke to me from New York.
Tom Porteous, Human Rights Watch says the Bahraini government engaged in abuse of medical staff. What exactly does your report document?
TOM PORTEOUS: Well this is basically a report that looks at a concerted attack against the medical community. First of all the report documents the way in which the security forces surrounded and literally besieged medical facilities, including the main hospital in Bahrain.
But also it looks at the way in which patients who were suspected of having been injured in protests were rounded up in some cases into incommunicado detention and beaten in spite of their injuries and then also it looks at attacks on medical staff themselves with continue now with a trial by military courts of about 48 medical personnel.
ELEANOR HALL: Did people die because of these government actions?
TOM PORTEOUS: In some cases it does appear quite possible that a number of people actually may have died. Certainly harm to health but also probable death as a result of these interventions by the security forces.
ELEANOR HALL: Was there any one case that particularly affected you?
TOM PORTEOUS: Yeah I mean there was the case of one chap who had been, you know, very severely injured. He'd been hit by birdshot pellets and they were really all over his body and he was in a very weak state.
And the doctors begged the security forces not to move him and they insisted and they took him away. It was obviously clear that this chap was in a great deal of pain as he was being forced to walk away.
Eventually they put him in a wheelchair and they just carted him off and they put him in a sports utility vehicle and drove him away. And we've been trying to ascertain where this young man was taken, what happened to him ever since. This was you know, a few months ago now and he's just disappeared as far as we can gather.
ELEANOR HALL: So you don't know what happened to him, do you know what happened to the doctors that were trying to help him?
TOM PORTEOUS: The doctors we know what happened to them is that, you know, that many of them were arrested and now there are almost 50 of them who are facing trial on a variety of different charges. So clearly the doctors who were treating these injured protesters have been viewed with a great deal of suspicion as well as the protesters themselves. And for us this just seems to be gratuitous and retributive measure on the part of the government, in order to warn people not to side with the protesters.
And that's why we felt it was important to put out a report on this particular subject and of course it continues today as we speak.
ELEANOR HALL: So the government stifled the uprising essentially in mid-March with the help of the Saudis but you're saying that did not put an end to this abuse and persecution of doctors?
TOM PORTEOUS: These trials continue and they are clearly a way of trying to instil fear in the population and to prevent them from resuming the protests.
ELEANOR HALL: How did you conduct your investigation, did the government allow you into the country to interview doctors?
TOM PORTEOUS: Most of the research that we did was kind of on the ground, I mean we were there during the protests, we were there during the crackdown and in the weeks following the crackdown. So we were able to witness a lot of the things that we documented in this report at first hand.
But for the last six weeks or so, probably two months perhaps, we have not been able to access Bahrain, it's been impossible for us to get in. In the meantime we're able to monitor quite effectively from outside because we have many good contacts.
ELEANOR HALL: The government denies that it’s abusing doctors and says the protesters were in fact hiding weapons in the hospital. Did you seek a response from the government to these allegations?
TOM PORTEOUS: Yes indeed, well that's the line that the government has taken to justify this abuse that took place at the hospital and abuse against other medical facilities and abuse in general against the medical community.
We have sought clarification of the statements of the government to that effect and you know, we've taken those statements very seriously.
We ourselves did not see any evidence of that and we were there at the time, and we've written to the government to ask for, you know, further elaboration of these claims and we have not to date received any response.
However, the government has now established an investigative commission which is composed of some extremely prominent international human rights experts to look into the whole crisis and the consequences of the crisis and that's a positive step I should say.
So we do hope that there will be some clarity and we'll get a full picture of the government's side of the story as that investigative commission starts and completes its work.
ELEANOR HALL: So what is Human Rights Watch calling for now, both from the government and indeed from the international community?
TOM PORTEOUS: We're calling on the government to use restraint in its approach to the medical community, we're calling on them to essentially release those who have been detained and that there should be some accountability for any abuses on the part of the security forces.
As far as the international community is concerned, you know, we're very concerned that while the European Union and the United States, which are both close allies of Bahrain, have been very quick to condemn violence on the part of governments against protesters in other parts of the Middle East, Bahrain has been the exception.
And it's important that policy makers in the West should see what's going on in Bahrain and very much part of the pattern of what's going on in the rest of the region.
ELEANOR HALL: Would it make a difference if the US in particular spoke out?
TOM PORTEOUS: Of course it would because I mean Bahrain is a very small country that is extremely dependent on the goodwill of its Western allies.
ELEANOR HALL: Tom Porteous, thanks very much for joining us.
TOM PORTEOUS: You're welcome, thank you.
ELEANOR HALL: That's the deputy program director from Human Rights Watch, Tom Porteous.
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