Syria: Bashar al assad, betraying his people but also the medical profession

A few years ago, I spent some time in Damascus, in a buoyant attempt to learn Arabic. It is a country that I have a great affection for, a collective sentiment by the many friends, from a myriad of countries, ethnicities and religions whom I was fortunate to meet there.

Whilst residing there one could be forgiven in thinking that all was well, or at least, that Syria was not as precarious as some of its neighbouring Middle-eastern countries.

This may seem quite preposterous and indeed laughable in hindsight but it is explicable. In the streets of Damascus one is often confronted with large signs of Assad proclaiming “I believe in Syria”. The signs are ubiquitous and are not the conventional image of a dictator in military attire but instead, a distinguished, suited and almost handsome looking man.

If one were to ask the local residents their thoughts on Assad, as I often did, they would swiftly pronounce “We love Assad” and perhaps, naively, it seemed genuine. The reality was that the Syrians I spoke with were more likely fuelled by trepidation, scared they would be found out by the secret police for speaking anything less than admiration, or mysteriously disappear, which was not an altogether unusual occurrence.

Incidentally, I phoned my former Arabic Tutor in Damascus a few weeks ago and she reiterated, in Arabic, the same assertion “We love Assad”… “There are no problems in Syria”…”The television is making the problems”.

The authentic devotion for Assad that I thought, erroneously, I had witnessed was not love, but legitimate fear.

The Arab uprising has catalysed Syrians to valiantly overcome the fear barrier, despite the death toll, which has been reported between 1700 to 2000.

The international community has been phlegmatic in condemning his actions and only yesterday called on Assad “to step aside” and not step down as Robert Fisk, astutely pointed out.

Bashar has not only his betrayed his people, who I sincerely believe are paragons of affection, generosity and loyalty; he has also betrayed his medical profession and flagrantly violated the Hippocratic Oath “to do no harm”.

Bashar, a medical doctor who had specialised in ophthalmology has also been deliberately targeting medical services.

Physicians for human rights (PHR), an independent non-governmental organisation have received reports of “violations of medical neutrality in Syria” and have called to for Assad’s government to discontinue its operation of “targeting medical facilities, health workers and their patients” .

The government security forces are in command of access to hospitals and many of the civilians who are injured requiring medical care are reluctant to seek hospital treatment for fear of being detained or tortured at hospital facilities, by government officials.

The limited hospital access, depleting blood supplies have been compounded by the dwindling numbers of physicians. According to Syrian physicians, it has also been reported that 134 doctors have either been detained or simply disappeared.

PHR reveal the deplorable report of a 43 year old Syrian physician who died after being tortured by the Syrian police. The incident, as narrated by his brother states “My brother was a peaceful, well-educated, secular physician who was respected by his peers internationally”.

In the distressing account he recalls how his brother was interrogated by the secret police after visiting Miami to attend a medical conference and later died during the interrogation.

In times of conflict, national doctors are crucial; as Hans Hogrefe articulates “When you attack a doctor, you’re attacking all the patients who depend on that doctor.”

It is apparent that Bashar Al Assad does not believe in the sanctity of his own medical profession, health or humanity and most certainly, neither does he believe in Syria.

Recent Posts on The Foreign Desk

• China turns friendly with India - but why?
• Syria's cannibal rebel defends himself
• India’s latest $2m corruption scandal is a very old scam
• You don’t have to have visited Syria to be horrified by 'Syria: Across the Lines'
• The two sides in Syria’s civil war are talking

• besarion

  Assad cannot love his people because he does not trust them. As a man who appeared to have everything,a wonderful Nation, a worthwhile career and a lovely family, he has mutated himself into an International Pariah. I hope he gives way to a ballot box before any more Syrians end up in boxes.

• lordlent

  syria is one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle east…studying there without first knowing what the country is like is very naive & dangerous.

• alanpaul1

  Am I alone in finding the hypocrisy here in the west relating to Syria appalling? Nato is helping the rebels in Libya (and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing the fact is that it arose because a nasty dictator was shooting at fellow citizens). The same sentence is apposite in Syria but the deaths of around 2000 citizens at the hands of the army/police in Syria seems not to have registered to the extent that the people of Syria are getting any help in their struggle to be rid of the current regime.
  For the last 50 years Syria has blamed Israel for all of its problems. One can now see that such allegations are totally untrue and Israel is just a convenient excuse for them. About time that the syrian people got some outside support to stop them being butchered by their own government

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  yes. you are

• DocKnowsBest

  I recently made a similar argument to one of our ex-ambassadors to Syria. His response was that Assad is not medically qualified – an optometrist or optician, not an an ophthalmologist.

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Ronald-Hudson/100000899611410 Ronald Hudson

  How ever bad and evil these dictators are lets get one thing clear in our minds – Britain cannot afford yet another war!