New investigation exposes how the Syrian government has criminalized the provision of health care to the sick and wounded

The Syrian government has systematically targeted health professionals for arrest, detention, and torture, according to a new investigation published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

“My Only Crime Was That I Was a Doctor” is the first-ever report to document the purposeful, illegal, and brutal strategy by the Syrian government to commit these targeted atrocities against medical workers, effectively criminalizing their delivery of health care to the sick and wounded. PHR clinicians conducted in-depth interviews and structured psychological assessments of 21 formerly-detained Syrian health professionals, providing new insight into how the Syrian government has grotesquely punished health workers for carrying out their professional duties.

“The searing
testimonies of inhumane detention conditions and brutal torture techniques that
we gathered from Syrian physicians, pharmacists, paramedics, and others shed
new light on one of the most depraved aspects of Assad’s war on his own
people,” said Michele
Heisler, MD, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights and report
co-author. “All available evidence points consistently toward the Syrian
government’s systematic and strategic persecution of health workers.”

In PHR’s
analysis, these assaults against health workers are a key component of the war
crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Syrian government. Building
on abundant existing evidence of the Syrian government’s attacks on the health sector and its widespread use of torture to intimidate
populations and suppress perceived dissent, PHR finds that the Syrian
government has violated both domestic and international laws. It has trampled
on fundamental medical ethics and decimated the Syrian health system, causing
widespread death and suffering over the eight-year conflict.

Parallel and
ongoing research by Physicians for Human Rights
points to how these violations fit into a broader pattern of Syrian government targeting
of health care facilities and personnel. Since March 2011, PHR has documented
the killings of at least 914 civilian medical personnel in Syria. Medical
personnel killed while providing care have predominantly lost their lives
during attacks upon medical facilities or while providing first aid in the
field. PHR has also documented 588 attacks on 350 health facilities in Syria. The
documentation attributes more than 90 percent of the documented attacks on
health facilities and personnel to the Syrian government and its allies,
including Russia.

From the
circumstances surrounding their arrests to the nature of their interrogations, the
torture inflicted on them, and court appearances, the health workers’
testimonies demonstrate how their provision of medical services was
specifically invoked by Syrian authorities throughout their time in detention. The
report details the arrests of many health professionals while they were working
in hospitals or delivering medical supplies to facilities. Most sources PHR
interviewed were accused by their torturers of providing medical care to “terrorists.”

Health
professionals interviewed for this study reported that Syrian security forces
regularly beat, humiliated, starved, and subjected them to stress positions and
solitary confinement – in one case for 14 months. Health workers reported to
PHR that they were burned, shocked with electricity, sexually assaulted, and
forced to witness torture and sexual assault of fellow detainees. PHR clinicians
documented how the infliction of torture resulted in severe physical and
psychological trauma and, in some cases, permanent disability. The report
recognizes that the 21 health workers interviewed were among those fortunate
enough to make it out of Syrian detention facilities alive. The health workers
reported that they had witnessed the deaths of fellow medical workers in
detention.

The report
also highlights the remarkable resilience and professional commitment of Syrian
health workers. Even while confined in life-threatening prison conditions and
subjected to torture, some of the health workers continued to provide what care
and support they could to their fellow detainees. Upon their eventual release, the
majority of the health workers PHR interviewed returned to work in the health
or humanitarian fields, either elsewhere in Syria or in neighboring countries,
sometimes at great personal risk.

The Syrian
government’s industrial-scale incarceration apparatus – which has enabled the detention,
interrogation, torture, extrajudicial execution, and disappearance of tens of
thousands of civilians – has been extensively documented by United Nations
bodies and human rights monitors. The PHR report documents a new and
underrecognized dimension of the Syrian government’s immense catalog of war
crimes – the purposeful targeting of health workers for arrest, detention, and
torture. Medical ethics requires health professionals to provide care without
discrimination to all, regardless of political affiliation.

“Physicians
for Human Rights calls on all parties to the conflict, particularly the Syrian
government and affiliated forces, to immediately and unconditionally release
all arbitrarily or unlawfully detained individuals and allow unconditional
access to detention sites in the country. The Syrian government must respect
the rights and dignity of all Syrian citizens, including the health care
workers on whom all Syrians rely, and must stop criminalizing health care,”
said Susannah Sirkin,
director of policy at PHR. “United Nations member states, regional bodies, and
the international community must hold the Syrian government accountable for its systematic persecution,
detention, and torture of health care workers, which should shock the
conscience of all humanity.”

PHR further
calls on national governments to support justice and accountability, including
by exercising universal jurisdiction, to investigate and prosecute Syrian
military and civilian officials responsible for committing war crimes and
crimes against humanity in Syria. Such efforts in France, Germany, Norway and
elsewhere are emerging signs of promise that the prevailing state of impunity for
crimes in Syria will end.

“I was working in the emergency ward, changing a patient’s dressing. I felt a tap on my shoulder … my arms were twisted behind my back, and I was slammed against a wall. I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and quickly loaded into a vehicle…. The entire medical staff was arrested on that day.”– Hassan,* a nurse from Homs.

“He [my torturer] kept saying that ‘you are a group of organized doctors and you have your own field hospitals and your own warehouses’ … He wanted names of doctors and where the field hospitals and warehouses were.”–Wessam,* a health volunteer from Rural Damascus.

“Losing consciousness was a blessing because it was a break from all the physical and psychological torture.” –Tareq,* a health activities coordinator from Aleppo.

“Every cell of my body writhed from the pain. You feel like you can’t stop shrieking. The shocks bounced me around the room. Even after it was over, the pain persisted as if I was still being electrocuted.”–Dr. Ibrahim,* a pediatrician from Daraa.

“They brought in two women and the soldiers on duty raped them right in front of us. One of them fainted from screaming. I thought she was dead. She was a nurse from Qusair in Homs. Confronting those kinds of atrocities and feeling powerless in front of this inhumanity is much harder than physical torture.”–Tareq,* a health activities coordinator from Aleppo.

“We got used to the smell of dead bodies.”– Omar,* a health volunteer from Harast.

“I did have a lot of hopelessness and guilt but working with detainees transformed my bitterness to energy.”– Wessam,* a health volunteer from Rural Damascus.