{"id":6006,"date":"2009-07-01T23:26:35","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T22:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=6006"},"modified":"2009-07-01T23:26:35","modified_gmt":"2009-07-01T22:26:35","slug":"doctors-colluding-in-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/doctors-colluding-in-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors colluding in torture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Jonathan Cook looks into the role of the Israeli Medical Association in the torture of Palestinian prisoners, against the background of an international campaign by doctors to oust the Israeli head of the world\u2019s governing body on medical ethics because of his alleged complicity in torture.<\/p>\n<p><\/em>Israel\u2019s watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, according to Israeli human rights groups.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups say, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe accusations will add fuel to a campaign backed by hundreds of doctors from around the world to force Yoram Blachar, who heads the IMA, to step down from his recent appointment as president of the World Medical Association (WMA).<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nMore than 700 doctors have signed a petition arguing that Dr Blachar has disqualified himself from leadership of the WMA, the profession\u2019s governing ethical body, by effectively condoning torture in Israel.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe campaign against Dr Blachar has gained ground rapidly since his appointment as president in November. Critics said his alleged complicity in the use of torture in Israeli detention facilities can be traced to 1995, when he became chairman of the IMA.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nUntil 1999, when Israel\u2019s Supreme Court restricted torture, Israeli doctors routinely supervised the medical treatment of abused detainees, mostly Palestinians from the occupied territories.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nDuring that period Dr Blachar surprised many colleagues by expressing support for Israeli interrogators\u2019 use of \u201cmoderate physical pressure\u201d in a letter to <em>The Lancet<\/em>, the British medical journal. The phrase covers a wide range of practices from beatings and binding prisoners in painful positions to sleep deprivation. It is regarded by human rights organizations as a euphemism for torture.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nDespite the 1999 court ruling, a coalition of 14 Israeli human rights groups known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unitedagainsttorture.org\/\">United Against Torture<\/a> concluded in its latest annual report in November that Israeli detention facilities are still using torture systematically. Israeli doctors are also being relied on to treat the resulting injuries.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nLast week, Physicians for Human Rights and the Public Committee against Torture in Israel published a joint report examining hundreds of arrests in which Palestinians were bound in \u201cdistorted and unnatural\u201d ways to inflict \u201cpain and humiliation\u201d amounting to torture.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe report noted instances where prisoners, including a pregnant woman and a dying man, were shackled while doctors carried out emergency procedures in a hospital.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAccording to the report, the doctors violated the Tokyo Declaration, the key code of medical ethics adopted by the WMA in 1975 that bans the use of cruel, humiliating or inhuman treatment by physicians.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIshai Menuchin, the head of the Public Committee, said his group had been lobbying strenuously against Israeli doctors\u2019 complicity in torture since it issued a report, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stoptorture.org.il\/files\/pcat%20new%20web%20file%20eng%20light.pdf\">Ticking Bombs<\/a>\u201d, in 2007, arguing that torture was routine in Israel.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe Public Committee highlighted the testimonies of nine Palestinians who had been tortured by interrogators. The report also noted that in most cases Israeli physicians treating detainees \u201creturn their patients to additional rounds of torture, and remain silent\u201d.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIn June last year, Physicians for Human Rights drew the IMA\u2019s attention to two cases in which the attending doctor failed to report signs of torture on a Palestinian.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAnat Litvin of Physicians for Human Rights told the IMA: \u201cWe believe that doctors are used by torturers as a safety net \u2014 take them out of the system and torture will be much more difficult to enact.\u201d<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe groups stepped up their pressure in February, writing to Avinoam Reches, the chairman of the IMA\u2019s ethics committee. They demanded that his association investigate six cases of doctors who failed to report signs of torture.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIn one case, a prison doctor, under pressure from interrogators, agreed to retract a written recommendation that a detainee be immediately hospitalized for treatment.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nProf Reches promised to conduct an inquiry. However, last month the two human rights groups criticized him for failing to investigate their claims, accusing him of holding only \u201camicable and unofficial\u201d conversations over the phone with a few of the doctors concerned.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cWe have sent to the IMA many testimonies from victims of torture who were referred to doctors for treatment,\u201d Dr Menuchin said. \u201cBut the IMA has yet to do anything about it.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cA significant number of doctors in Israel, in detention facilities and public hospitals, know torture is taking place, but choose to avert their gaze.\u201d<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThis month, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dci-pal.org\/english\/home.cfm\">Defence for Children International<\/a> issued a report on the torture of Palestinian children, noting that in several of the cases it cited, Israeli doctors had turned a blind eye. A boy of 14 who was beaten repeatedly on a broken arm reported the abuse to a doctor who, he said, replied only: \u201cI had nothing to do with that.\u201d<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe report stated that the group \u201chas not encountered a single case where an adult in a position of authority, such as a soldier, doctor, judicial officer or prison staff, has intervened on behalf of a child who was mistreated\u201d.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nCampaigners against Dr Blachar\u2019s appointment as the head of the WMA say its Israeli sister association\u2019s inaction on torture is unsurprising given its chairman\u2019s public stance.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nDerek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry at King\u2019s College London, said: \u201cThe IMA under Dr Blachar is in collusion with the Israeli state policy of torture. Its role is to put a benign face on the occupation.\u201d<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nDr Blachar told the Israeli website Ynet last week that such criticisms were \u201cslanderous\u201d, saying he and the IMA denounced all forms of torture.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe WMA, with nine million members in more than 80 countries, was established in 1947 as a response to the abuses sanctioned by German and Japanese doctors during World War II.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIn 2007, the WMA\u2019s general assembly called on doctors to document and report all cases of suspected torture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Cook looks into the role of the Israeli Medical Association in the torture of Palestinian prisoners, against the background of an international campaign by doctors to oust the Israeli head of the world\u2019s governing body on medical ethics because of his alleged complicity in torture. Israel\u2019s watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}