Militiamen allied with Saudi-led coalition have been “terrorizing” hospitals and doctors in Yemen, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
The militiamen “are leading a campaign of harassment and intimidation against hospital staff and are endangering civilians by stationing fighters and military positions near medical facilities,” the human rights organization said.
These militiamen are allied with exiled former leader Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia and with the US-backed, Saudi-led coalition that has been waging a destructive bombing campaign in impoverished Yemen since March 2015.
Amnesty International researchers interviewed 15 doctors, along with other hospital staff, in the major southern city of Taiz, which is controlled by Sanaa government. The rights group said US-allied militiamen “regularly harassed, detained or even threatened to kill them over the past six months.”
Yemeni doctors said they have sometimes been forced to carry out their work at gunpoint. In other cases, when the hospital has been at capacity, the militiamen would threaten them.
The militiamen have sometimes started physical fights with medical staff, the report added. On at least one occasion, they killed someone in the hospital. A doctor told Amnesty International that, when a militiaman with a minor leg injury was turned away because he did not require emergency care and could be treated by a nurse, the rebel’s father started firing his gun, killing a patient and injuring hospital staff.
“Hundreds of times threatened us and interfered with the hospital’s administration and our decision-making,” an administrative worker recalled, referring to Hadi militiamen. “When we stand up to them, they threaten us with being killed.”
Philip Luther, research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said there “is compelling evidence to suggest that anti-Houthi forces have waged a campaign of fear and intimidation against medical professionals in Taiz,” referring to the militiamen fighting the government in Sanaa which has been run by revolutionary movement Ansarullah, also known as Houthi movement.
The hospitals in Taiz treat people who have been wounded on all sides of the war. Luther pointed out, “It is a fundamental rule of international humanitarian law that the wounded – whether civilians or fighters – must be collected and cared for.”
“It is outrageous and unacceptable that anti-Houthi forces are retaliating against medical staff for performing their duties,” he added.
US-backed, Saudi-led airstrikes have taken an even larger toll on hospitals inside Yemen. A report earlier this month by the World Health Organization found that a majority (55 percent) of health facilities are closed or partially functioning in the 16 of Yemen’s 22 provinces that it reviewed. After 19 months of brutal bombing, Yemen’s health facilities had only two doctors or fewer in 42 percent of the 276 surveyed districts.
Source: Amnesty International
