Health professionals and the medical students are under threat in the current situation in Nepal. On April 8th 2006, the government of Nepal arrested Dr Mahesh Maskey international Vice-President International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and six other doctors, - Dr Sharad Onta, Dr Saroj Dhital, Dr Bharat Pradhan, Dr Bidur Osti, Dr Sunder Mani Dixit, and Dr Madhu Ghimire, from a peaceful demonstration in Kathmandu, Nepal. They all are under at-least 3-month detention orders. Another physician, Dr Mathura Prasad Shrestha, President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, Nepal has been in detention for the last 2 months on frivolous charges. These have been the biggest ever-peaceful demonstrations in all parts of the country. Doctors (including members of the Nepal Medical Association), engineers, journalists, workers, writers, artists, intellectuals, lawyers, professors and government office bearers all have expressed their solidarity for the ongoing movement.
According to eyewitness accounts by a Nepali medical student – “On 9th April, 19 medical students and a doctor were arrested while taking part in peaceful demonstrations. On 10th April, around 30 armed police backed by the Royal Nepalese Army entered the hostel of the premier medical institution in Nepal Tribhuwan Institute Teaching Hospital and injured at least 7 medical students and a doctor, 3 of them critically. Just 4 days ago, 20 of medical students were arrested while they were in peaceful demonstration, following which around 30-armed police entered the teaching hospital hostel and beat indiscriminately around 20 students and a doctor and terrorised them in the night at 10pm. The army backed them. The next day, a few health professionals were threatened for treating the victims of the movement in a place around 500 were injured of which 150 were firearm victims. Knowledge of the whereabout of the medical students is unknown. The teaching hospital where I study only had around 120 injured. However, the king with the help of army and the police and a handful of his yesmen has shown the most severe brutality an autocrat could show. While the country is on fire, he is spending his holidays in the beautiful city of Pokhara, 200 km west to the Capital.”
Health professionals have also been threatened for treating the people injured during the protests. The police have closed down several treatment centres in Kathmandu and a German and an American physician (Dr Brian Cobb) were threatened with violence and asked to leave the country for treating victims of the violence. American physician Brian Cobb was injured while he was operating mobile camps for the movement victims and was subsequently asked to leave the country. In an email from Bangladesh Dr Brian Cobb writes-. “What I saw in Gongabu( part of capital, Kathmandu)—many people shot with live ammunition, including children, savage beatings, people pushed off buildings, beating and shooting at us while we were caring for the injured—defies words. And the secret arrest and detention of a German doctor, a Nepalese doctor and 6 Nepalese volunteers and myself at machine-gun point, denial of our right to consular assistance, and our being saved by my running from them to a UN team that happened to come along and subsequent deportation were unpleasant, but nothing compared with the suffering of so many others.”
These arrests and violations of human rights have generated widespread international condemnation from all quarters including the medical community. In three days more than 300 doctors, nurses, medical students from several countries from around the world along with several physicians and human rights organisations including the Centre for International Health and Human Rights Studies, Canada (Director- Edward Mills; International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Executive Director- Michael Christ); Physicians for Global Survival (President-Dale Dewar); Peace through Health (Head- Joanna Santa Barbara); Centre for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins ( Director-Chris Beyrer);Institute of Human Rights, Emory ( Director-Dabney Evans MPH) ;Physicians for Human Rights ( Research Associate-Jenni Halperin);Physicians for Social Responsibility; Doctors for Global Health ( Jennifer Kasper, President); Benevolent Organisation for Development Health and Insight ( BODHI), Australia ,( Medical Director Colin Butler) have signed on to protest these violation of human rights in an online letter to the government of Nepal and King Gyanendra
They urge the government of Nepal needs to adhere to international human rights standards and immediately release these doctors from detention; stop further abuses of human rights including that of physicians and medical students; and allow medical professionals to carry out their responsibilities without fear of being targeted.
Please sign the above petition at
http://www.petitiononline.com/lapendoc/petition.html
16-04-2006, 09:53 AM
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