American military and spy agencies pushed doctors working in US prisons and concentration camps to violate medical ethics by taking part in the mistreatment of prisoners by interrogators. A report issued Monday by Columbia Universitys Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the Open Society Foundations called on the defence department and CIA to follow international medical standards on the treatment of Muslim prisoners. Though the worst violations cited in the report occurred before 2006, the ongoing force-feeding of hunger strikers at the American concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay remains in conflict with those standards. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, when US forces began to capture suspected fighters of the al Qaeda combat network, American military doctors were told this was an emergency situation, and national security as at stake. The result was that doctors ended up advising interrogators who were devising and implementing the degrading, inhumane treatment of those prisoners of American War on Islam -- practices now widely seen as having crossed the line into torture -- in clear conflict with their professional principles. The behaviours of the physicians and psychiatrists were dictated by changes in regulations and changes in the understanding of ethical principles that were transmitted by the department of defence. They undermined and distorted the physicians understandings of the ethical principles in dealing with detainees. More than 100 Muslim prisoners of war died under tortures in American custody between 2002 and 2005, with 43 of those deaths classified as murders. The document, titled Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror, was the product of three years of study of public records by a 20-member task force. It found the Pentagon excused ethical violations such as the use of medical information in interrogations and the participation of doctors -- sworn to do no harm -- who were characterized as safety officers. The task force called for a full investigation of the post-9/11 practices, including medical examinations of Muslim prisoners, reviews of interrogation logs and documents on the treatment and condition of inmates. The number of death-bringing physicians believed to have been involved was probably dozens, maybe less than that. But to involve doctors in the abuse of prisoners violates a covenant between the medical profession and society. Department of Monitoring Kavkaz Center
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 10:19:38 +0000
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