PURSUING OUR CAMPAIGN: LETTER TO NEW WMA PRESIDENT / SEE OUTRAGEOUS GOINGS ON AT TURKEY CONFERENCE
Reageer (0)Dear fellow signatories and other supporters,
Please see below the letter just sent to new World Med Assoc President Dr Dana Hanson of Canada. We are in a new phase. And look at the transparent cynicism
and moral corruption evident in the behaviour of Israeli Med Assoc representatives at a recent health & human rights conference in Turkey- described halfway down. Thanks to Dr Ruchama Marton. Dr Hanson was present at these proceedings, saw Dr Marton's Power Point presentation that included Case "M". He has good reason to feel that IMA behaviour has personally compromised him as WMA President, which it has- unless he takes the action the WMA is mandated to take.
More shortly.
Yours, Derek S
Convenor
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Frederickton Medical Clinic 30 Nov 2009
Frederickton NB E3B 6H5
Canada
Dear Dr Hanson
We congratulate you on your election to the Presidency of the WMA. I am writing to you on behalf of lead signatory Professor Alan Meyers of Boston University, and the other 725 signatories to a ongoing campaign and appeal (I am the convenor) to the WMA Council. Our focus was one of your member associations, the Israeli Medical Association, and at a point when longstanding IMA President Yoram Blachar was reigning WMA President. We imagine that you have heard of this. We first wrote to the then WMA Council Chair Dr Edward Hill and to whole Council last May (see enclosure by way of reprise). The position we have now reached is summarised in the piece below, posted up at the website of the British Medical Journal (and subsequently published in the paper journal).
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6 November 2009
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By Derek A Summerfield,
Send response to journal:
Re: The WMA speaks out on Iran but not on Israel. Why not?
I note with interest in the BMJ that the World Medical Association has spoken out about possible collusion by doctors with abuses of prisoners in Iran (1). You report Dr Otmar Kloiber, WMA Secretary General as saying: “We were approached by a number of different physicians in Iran. Because the reports come from different sources we thought they were likely to be reliable. We wanted to send a strong signal with this motion”. Dr Frank Montgomery, vice President of the German Medical Association (and a WMA Council member) added: “physicians serve people not governments. Physicians will not participate in torture or degrading treatment. They are the whistleblowers of such criminal acts committed by governments”.
I commend these statements and the WMA action, which is exactly what the WMA was mandated to do when it was set up after WW2 as the official watchdog on medical ethics worldwide. But there could hardly be a greater contrast with the WMA approach currently to Israel. In June the BMJ reported that 725 doctors from 43 countries had written collectively to the WMA Council to urge them to examine whether the Israeli Medical Association, a WMA member, had been adhering to the WMAs own codes, notably the WMA Declaration of Tokyo, the seminal anti-torture code for doctors (2). The WMA is mandated to ensure that its member associations abide by its codes. The question was all the more resonant in the light of the fact that longstanding IMA President Yoram Blachar had become WMA President.
The charge was exactly the same as the one the WMA is now raising in relation to Iran: the collusion of doctors (and the IMA) with the practice of torture of prisoners in Israel. The 725 doctors cited a voluminous evidence base from both international and regional human rights organisations of high repute; attached to the letter were reports from Amnesty (twice, a decade apart), including their Briefing paper to the UN Committee Against Torture last year, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the Defence for Children International, Palestine section , publication of the 2008 United Against Torture report (UAT, a coalition of 14 Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations) to the UN Committee Against Torture. PCATI and PHRI separately submitted reports and findings to the WMA Council to urge them to examine the case. Dr Wendy Orr, the South African doctor who blew the whistle on the collusion of doctors with torture and other abuses of prisoners in the apartheid era and was later a Commissioner in the SA Truth Commission, also wrote to the WMA Council to press them to act. (The Medical Association of South Africa was for a period excluded from the WMA). Prominent international academics like Professors Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein lent their names from the start. Recently in the BMJ Professor John Yudkin urged the BMA, a fellow WMA member, to use their influence in a matter of such medical ethical gravity(3).
And the response of the WMA Council after 5 months? Not a word, not even acknowledgement of receipt of the original letter with evidence and signatory list, despite polite reminders, despite further material submitted in support of the case. Last week, Professor Alan Meyers of Boston University, the lead signatory, finally reached Dr Edward Hill, WMA Council Chair, on the phone in USA, to be told that the WMA would not be responding.
The campaign did prompt a response from WMA President Blachar, not the addressee of the letter, in his own right. In August he instructed London lawyers to threaten me personally with proceedings for libel (I am the convenor of the campaign), alleging that I was conducting a vendetta and had "deceived" the other 724 signatories.
So what are we to conclude from the stark difference in the WMA handling of the Israel case by comparison with Iran? The WMA Council have turned away from an evidence-based appeal by doctors which, arising from 43 countries, is of unprecedented scope and breadth, an appeal framed within the WMAs own codes and pronouncements on the duties of doctors. This is a significant breach. If the weight of evidence we cite does not constitute an emphatic case, then no evidence about medical ethical breaches anywhere ever will, and we might as well throw the Declaration of Tokyo in the waste bin. To speak out about Iran is laudable, but it is easy. As with comparable concerns about the role of US doctors at Guantanamo and elsewhere, our case is surely the litmus test of whether internationally agreed medical ethical codes actually matter, and can hold transgressors to account when they have powerful friends.
Derek Summerfield
1. Wise J.WMA calls on Iran to respect medical ethical code. BMJ 2009;339:4321.
2. Kmietowicz Z. Doctors call on head of WMA to quit as matter of priority. BMJ 2009;338:2556.
3. Yudkin J. The IMA and doctors complicity in torture. BMJ 339:4078
Competing interests: 17 years involvement in human rights work in Israel-Palestine
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As new WMA President we the signatories are wondering what you make of this situation, and in what peril it is likely to put the international standing and reputation for probity of the WMA -upon which all its work (not just on torture) depends. We have to say that on grounds of principle, and of high public interest, we cannot leave things where they are.
Furthermore, we must point to what appears an ethical scandal at a conference in Turkey 2 weeks ago called "Right to Health as Bridge to Peace in Middle East", which makes transparent (as if further evidence was needed) where the IMA stands, and which you witnessed. It comes from Dr Ruchama Marton, the Israeli psychiatrist and founder of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Dr Marton has a scarcely rivalled record as a campaigner for human rights and medical ethics in Israel-Palestine over many years, as you might know. Her work has embodied the very principles behind WMA codes and pronouncements on the duties of doctors. In a private capacity she is one of the 725 signatories.
The objectives of the conference were to contribute to the implementation of the right to health, and to strengthening the independence of the medical profession in Middle East countries. Present were representatives from 5 Middle East countries (national med associations, health and human rights orgs). One of these was the IMA, who had 3 representatives there. Supporting the conference were the WMA and WHO. Present for WMA were no less than yourself as President, and the permanent Secretary General Dr Otmar Kloiber.
Just before Dr Marton was due to speak, she tells us she was approached by 2 representatives from the International Federation of Health & Human Rights Organisations (IFHHRO)- presumably under pressure from the IMA - who urged her not to mention the torture case that was in her Power Point presentation. She was told that if she did not do this, it would likely be the end of the conference. Some sort of trade-off was offered.
On a point of principle Dr Marton went ahead and showed her Power Point presentation. The excerpt to which the IMA representatives were objecting concerned Case “M”, a Palestinian man arrested in April 2008.
His affidavit states :
Interrogated for 20 days, most of the time seated on a
chair fixed to the floor, hands tied behind his back.
Beaten and shaken, while shackled to the chair.
Threatened that his house would be demolished and
mother would be arrested. Indeed she was.
Following severe beatings, he fainted and sustained cuts to
his head and face. He suffered severe pains in his jaw to
the extent he was unable to eat.
In presence of ambulance paramedics and a doctor,
interrogator instructs colleagues not to tell what happened,
but to say “M” fell down the stairs.
Hospital doctors treat him while still shackled. “M”
receives stitches to head and face. Doctor is asked by
interrogators not to order hospitalization. The doctor
obeys.
“M” was brought back to prison. Interrogators ordered “M”
to wait inside the ambulance 3 hours to avoid having “M”
examined by the prison doctor (the one who asks too
many questions). “M” was finally released to another
doctor, (the doctor who doesn’t ask questions).
When M complains to the prison doctor he is told to shut
up, sent shackled to confinement cell without medicine.
Medication administered only following Red Cross visit.
Because of what had happened, Dr Marton objected to the final vote on the issues to be prioritised for future attention, since she felt that the 3 votes available to the IMA delegation could not be regarded as likely to be cast in good faith. The IMA left early and the meeting broke up without an agreed plan on future activity.
Dr Hanson, how can this go on? Unless Case “M” was a total fabrication, and no one is alleging this, we see nakedly that several Israeli doctors were directly involved in his ‘management’ by the Israeli Security Services, knew perfectly well he had been tortured, did not intervene on his behalf, did not speak out and challenge the authorities- all of which doctors are specifically mandated to do by the Declaration of Tokyo. There is a weighty body of evidence to this effect already in the public domain, some of which we cited in our original submission to the WMA Council. Case “M” is virtually identical to some of the cases documented in the “Ticking Bombs” report of May 2007 from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.
And here you saw with your own eyes that IMA representatives, far from wanting to investigate Case “M”, far from providing ethical leadership to Israeli doctors in line with WMA membership, merely wanted the matter hidden and were prepared to draw the conference organisers into effective collusion to this end by pressurising them to get Dr Marton to excise it from her presentation if the conference was not to be aborted. Insofar as the Declaration of Tokyo requires doctors to speak out whenever and wherever they encounter, or suspect that they encounter, torture, the IMA did not just fail to do this, but sought through arm twisting to hide the truth- and in front of you and everyone else present. Arguably they compromised you as WMA President into the bargain. Having directly heard about this case, do not you too now have a duty to take action in accordance with the Declaration of Tokyo? For if not, as we have been saying in the BMJ and other media, what is the WMA and the structure of international medical ethical codes worth?
We the signatories and the other supporters to our campaign (some of whom are mentioned above) repeat our call: The WMA must formally investigate the track record of the IMA, as the WMA is mandated to do with all its member associations, if it is to put itself back on track and restore its reputation. A storm is growing and a lot of people in and out of the profession are waiting on what you will do. You can anticipate further coverage in the medical and other media (there were a clutch of reports at the time of our original letters), given what is at stake here.
I am copying this to the editors of the British Medical Journal and the Lancet, to the British Medical Association, and to the many other interested parties.
I am sending this by ordinary mail since I do not have an email for you. Please reply as soon as possible to Prof Meyers (afmeyers@bu.edu) or myself (derek.summerfield@googlemail.com).
Yours sincerely
Dr Derek Summerfield (convenor)
Hon Sen Lect, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, University of London.
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