"The Syrian regime is conducting a campaign of unrelenting repression against people wounded in demonstrations and the medical workers trying to treat them, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. While MSF cannot work directly in Syria, it has collected testimonies from wounded patients treated outside the country and from doctors inside Syria. The testimonies, collected from several people from various parts of the country, point to a crackdown on the provision of urgent medical care for people wounded in the ongoing violence in Syria.
"In Syria today, wounded patients and doctors are pursued, and risk torture and arrest at the hands of the security services," said Marie-Pierre Allié, MSF president. "Medicine is being used as a weapon of persecution." Most of the wounded do not go to public hospitals for fear of being arrested or tortured. When a wounded person is admitted to a hospital, a false name is sometimes provided to hide his or her identity. Doctors will provide false diagnoses to help patients elude security forces, which search for patients with wounds consistent with those sustained in protests and demonstrations."
