HRW and "Doctors Without Borders" on Syria

In September 2011, Human Rights Watch accused Syrian security forces of "forcibly removing" patients from the al-Barr hospital in Homs and preventing doctors from reaching the wounded.

"When we tried to help the wounded who needed urgent medical care, the security forces pushed us back, saying these were criminals and rapists," a doctor told HRW. "They were beating the wounded as they moved them out of the hospital."

Based on dozens of interviews with Syrians who had been injured in the uprising, the international organization Doctors Without Borders, too, concluded that for the Assad regime, medicine has become a weapon of persecution. "In Syria today, wounded patients and doctors are pursued, and risk torture and arrest at the hands of the security services," said president of DWB Marie-Pierre Allié in February 2012.

According to Doctors Without Borders, the Syrian government is also specifically targeting doctors who aid anti-regime protesters and fighters. A Syrian physician told the organization that many doctors who treated wounded patients in their private hospitals had been arrested and tortured. "We are constantly being pursued by the security forces," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/syrias-field-hospitals_n_1445915.html?ref=world