Not only are good Syrian doctors hiding wounded patients, they are reaching out to other doctors globally for help. So, really, where are all the global human rights activists, where is their outrage?
In the past five years, the Syrian government has assassinated, bombed, and tortured to death almost seven hundred medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that documents attacks on medical care in war zones. (Non-state actors, including ISIS, have killed twenty-seven.) Recent headlines announced the death of the last pediatrician in Aleppo, the last cardiologist in Hama. A United Nations commission concluded that “government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage,” denying treatment to wounded fighters and civilians “as a matter of policy.”
In response, some doctors established secret medical units to treat people injured in the crackdown. One surgeon at Aleppo University Hospital adopted the code name Dr. White. Along with three colleagues, he identified and stocked safe houses where emergency operations could be performed. Dr. White also lectured at the university’s faculty of medicine; he suspected that seven of his most promising students shared his sympathies toward the nascent uprising. Another doctor, named Noor, recruited them to join the mission. In Arabic, noor means “light,” so the group called itself Light of Life.
At night, Noor and Dr. White gave the medical students lessons via Skype, concealing their faces and voices. The goal was to teach them the principles of emergency first aid, with an emphasis on halting the bleeding from gunshot wounds. During demonstrations, the students waited in cars and vans to shuttle injured protesters to the safe houses, then disappeared. “They had to leave the house before my arrival,” Dr. White told me during a recent Skype call from Aleppo. “They could not know who this man is.”
More than 700 doctors killed in Syria war: UN
Attacks on hospitals since Syria’s war broke out five years ago have left more than 700 doctors and medical workers dead, many of them in air strikes, UN investigators said Tuesday.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria also condemned horrific violations by jihadists and voiced concern that Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants may have recruited hundreds of children into their ranks.
Commission chief Paulo Pinheiro told the UN Human Rights Council that widespread, targeted aerial attacks on hospitals and clinics across Syria “have resulted in scores of civilian deaths, including much-needed medical workers.”
“More than 700 doctors and medical personnel have been killed in attacks on hospitals since the beginning of the conflict,” he said.
Pinheiro, who was presenting the commission’s latest report to the council, said attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of so many medical professionals had made access to health care in the violence-wracked country extremely difficult — and in some areas completely impossible.
– ‘Terrorised survivors’ –
“As civilian casualties mount, the number of medical facilities and staff decreases, limiting even further access to medical care,” he said.
Pinheiro also denounced frequent attacks on other infrastructure essential to civilian life, such as markets, schools and bakeries.
“With each attack, terrorised survivors are left more vulnerable,” he said, adding that “schools, hospitals, mosques, water stations … are all being turned into rubble.”
Since March 2011, Syria’s brutal conflict has left more than 280,000 people dead and forced half the population to flee their homes.
War broke out after President Bashar al-Assad’s regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against protesters demanding political change in Arab Spring-inspired protests.
It has since become a multi-front war between regime forces, jihadists and other groups with the civilian population caught in the crossfire.
Pinheiro said the commission was investigating allegations that the Al-Nusra Front “and other Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have recruited hundreds of children under 15 in Idlib” in northwestern Syria.
The brutality of Syria’s conflict is preventing millions of children from attending school, and activists have warned this is helping fuel jihadist recruitment drives.
Pinheiro also condemned violations committed by the Islamic State group.
In a report published last week, the commission warned that IS jihadists were continuing to commit genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria.
In 2014, IS jihadists massacred members of the Kurdish-speaking minority mainly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq, forcing tens of thousands to flee, and captured thousands of girls and women.
– ‘Stop the genocide’ –
“As we speak, Yazidi women and girls are still sexually enslaved, subjected to brutal rapes and beatings. They are bought and sold in markets, passed from fighter to fighter like chattel, their dignity being ripped from them with each passing day,” Pinheiro said Tuesday.
“Boys are taken from their mother’s care and forced into ISIS training camps once they reach the age of seven,” he said, using another acronym for IS as he called on the international community to act “to stop the genocide.”
Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, also appealed for action.
“We need the (UN) Security Council to bring this … to the International Criminal Court” in the Hague, she told reporters on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council.
Dakhil said 3,200 Yazidi women and girls are still being held by IS, while around 1,000 boys under the age of 10 are being brainwashed and prepared for battle by the jihadists.
“This is still happening,” she said. “We need help.”
Around 400,000 Yazidis are still living in camps in northern Iraq, Dakhil said, adding that they still feared returning to Sinjar to rebuild their communities, since some of their Sunni Muslim neighbours had helped IS in its attacks.
“We need to rebuild peace … and trust,” she said. More from DailyMail.
