PHM-Exch> World Psychiatric Association: Enabling Israeli Apartheid?

[Hani Serag]

Distributed by Amal Daoud, Palestine

World Psychiatric Association: Enabling Israeli Apartheid?


Occupied Ramallah, 18 July 2012


The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
(PACBI) is deeply disturbed by the decision of the World Psychiatric
Association – Transcultural Psychiatry Section (WPA-TPS) to hold its 1st
International Conference on Cultural Psychiatry in Mediterranean Countries
in Israel in November 2012 [1]. We urge the WPA-TPS to uphold its
commitment to ethical standards, dignity and human rights by relocating
this conference to another country that does not embody injustice through
maintaining a regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid [2], as
Israel does. We also appeal to all members of WPA-TPS to refrain from
participating in the conference if it is to be convened in Israel.

As professionals, you are acutely aware that Israel has flouted
international law for several decades.  Since the hegemonic world powers
are actively complicit in enabling and perpetuating Israel’s colonial and
oppressive policies, we believe that the only avenue open to achieving
justice and upholding international law is sustained work on the part of
Palestinian and international civil society to put pressure on Israel and
its complicit institutions to end this oppression.

We wish to stress that conferences of this kind are being used politically
as an Israeli public relations tool against the global boycott,
divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.  A mainstream Israeli news
source reported recently that many international professionals are staying
away from Israel for its violations of international law and out of their
respect for the Palestinian boycott call [3]. Your participation in and
organization of this conference will work contrary to this, and be a
direct rejection of Palestinian civil society’s act of nonviolent
resistance to colonization and oppression.

More importantly, the Israeli medical establishment has consistently
refused to shoulder its ethical responsibility to ensure that its
institutions and members do not engage in serious violations of universal
medical ethics, not to mention basic human rights, particularly
Palestinians’ rights to life and freedom from torture and ill treatment.
It is in this context that we expect your association not to lend its name
to covering up these injustices--to do no harm, at the very least.

Many conveners of this conference are no doubt aware of the persistent
calls to the Israeli medical establishment, and the Israeli Medical
Association in particular (of which the Israeli Psychiatric Association is
a member), to investigate evidence of the collusion of medical personnel,
including physicians, in the ill-treatment and torture of Palestinians in
detention centers, prisons, and other facilities supervised by the
security forces.

In May 2009, 725 physicians and professors addressed an open letter to the
World Medical Association (WMA) Council from 43 countries around the
world, coordinated by Professor Alan Meyers of Boston University and Dr.
Derek Summerfield of the University of London [4].  The signatories
protested the appointment of Dr. Yoram Blachar, the longstanding President
of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), as President of the WMA, and
called for his removal.  In the words of the signatories, “under Dr
Blachar's leadership the IMA made a decision on political grounds years
ago to turn a blind eye to torture in Israel and the institutionalised
involvement of doctors.” Palestinian medical and health institutions
supported this initiative and urged condemnation of the IMA. [5]

The context within which the challenge to the Israeli Medical Association
was made, and which continues to be ignored by the IMA, is the WMA’s
Declaration of Tokyo (1975) that specifies that "physicians shall not
countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture or other
forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures, and in all situations,
including armed conflict and civil conflict". The WMA Annual General
Assembly of 2007 made it clear that inaction was not an option, stating
that "this is the first time the WMA has explicitly obliged doctors to
document cases of torture of which they become aware. The absence of
documenting and denouncing such acts might be considered as a form of
tolerance and of non-assistance to the victims." [6]

The authors of the letter also based themselves on a 1996 Amnesty
International report concluding that Israeli doctors working with the
security services "formed part of a system in which detainees are
tortured, ill treated and humiliated in ways that place prison medical
practice in conflict with medical ethics." Later, Amnesty's briefing to
the UN Committee against Torture in September 2008 focused on Amnesty
International's continuing concerns about Israel's failure to implement
the Convention against Torture in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and
the intensification of measures amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment and punishment. [7]

The letter goes on to explain that a 2007 report by the Public Committee
Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) gives a graphic demonstration of the
extent to which Israeli doctors continue to form an integral and everyday
part of the running of interrogation suites whose output is torture.  In
November 2008, PCATI filed a contempt of court motion to the High Court of
Justice against the government of Israel and the General Security Service
for their responsibility for a policy that grants a-priori permits to use
torture in interrogations. The IMA has never challenged torture as state
policy in Israel. [8]

The letter points to a justification of the use of "moderate physical
pressure" (condemned as torture by the UN Committee Against Torture) by
the President of the IMA in the international medical journal The Lancet
in 1997, concluding that “[t]his surely unprecedented action by the
president of a national medical association has not been disowned…. In the
age of evidence-based medicine his rejection of the documentary record has
been unprofessional and frequently contemptuous.” [9]

Israeli human rights organizations such as B`Tselem, Physicians for Human
Rights-Israel and the Public Committee against Torture in Israel have also
warned of this collusion [10]. Most recently, a report in 2011 by PCATI
and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel arrived at similar conclusions
[11]. It recommends, among other measures, that, “The Ministry of Health
and the Israel Medical Association must resolutely and unequivocally
announce to the public their opposition to torture and to the
participation of medical personnel in torture. They must unequivocally
condemn cases where doctors abandoned their ethical duties, whether
through involvement in torture or ill-treatment or by any other means, and
hold those doctors responsible for their actions.” [12]

It is important to note that the response of the medical establishment in
Israel to similar appeals in the past few years has been a resounding
silence. This is nothing but persistent complicity.

Convening a conference sponsored by the IMA would, therefore, constitute a
rejection of the appeal from over 170 civil society organizations that
comprise thePalestinian BDS movement. Specifically, your conference would
violate the Palestinian call for boycott by contravening clause 1 of the
“PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel,” in
which it calls for a boycott of academic events (such as conferences,
symposia, workshops, book and museum exhibits) convened or co-sponsored by
Israeli institutions:

All academic events, whether held in Israel or abroad, and convened or
co-sponsored by Israeli academic institutions or their departments and
institutes, deserve to be boycotted on institutional grounds. These
boycottable activities include panels and other activities sponsored or
organized by Israeli academic bodies or associations at international
conferences outside Israel. Importantly, they also include the convening
in Israel of meetings of international bodies and associations. [[13],
emphasis added]

We are not asking you at this point to endorse the boycott of Israel, but
simply not to cross our boycott picket line—not to undermine our struggle
for freedom, justice and equality.

We, therefore, call upon members of the WPA-TPS to press for the
conference venue to be changed to another country.  In the event that this
request is not met, we urge a widespread boycott of this conference.  No
self-respecting professional body, and especially not one concerned with
people’s dignity, human rights, and well being, should wish to enable a
regime of apartheid.

Sincerely,
PACBI
www.pacbi.org
pacbi at pacbi.org

About PACBI and the BDS movement
In 2004, inspired by the triumphant cultural boycott of apartheid South
Africa, and supported by key Palestinian unions and cultural groups, PACBI
issued a call for the academic and cultural boycott of institutions
involved in Israel’s occupation and apartheid [14]. The 2004 Palestinian
call appealed to the international academic community to, among other
things, “refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural
cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions”
[15].

Following this, in 2005, an overwhelming majority in Palestinian civil
society called for an all-encompassing BDS campaign based on the
principles of human rights, justice, freedom and equality [16]. The BDS
movement adopts a nonviolent, morally consistent strategy to hold Israel
accountable to the same human rights and international law standards as
other nations. It is asking the international academic community to heed
the boycott call, as it did in the struggle against South African
apartheid, until “Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967,
including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees
to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian
refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid." [17]


[1] http://www.wpa-tps.tel-aviv2012.com/
[2] In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell
Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian
people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated
regime of apartheid,”
http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa.
[3] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4251806,00.html
[4] www.bricup.org.uk/documents/medical/BlacharWMA.pdf
[5] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=464&key=health
[6] www.bricup.org.uk/documents/medical/BlacharWMA.pdf
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] B'tselem (1991). The Interrogation of Palestinians during the
Intifada: Ill-treatment, "Moderate Physical Pressure" or Torture?
www.btselem.org/download/199103_torture_eng.doc; Physicians for Human
Rights–Israel (2008). Oversight and Transparency in the Israeli Penal
System, July 2008. Tel Aviv, Israel
www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=119&ItemID=213and the Public Committee
Against Torture in Israel (2009), Accountability Denied: The Absence of
Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel. Periodic Report
December, 2009.
www.stoptorture.org.il/files/Accountability_Denied_Eng.pdf
[11] The report concludes:
Our experience on this matter is unequivocal: medical professionals are
indeed among those working for the authorities who interact with prisoners
and take part in what goes on in the prison system and the interrogation
rooms. Medical professionals abandon their duty by failing to document and
report torture; by passing on medical information to interrogators;
returning interrogees to the custody of their interrogators when in danger
of being exposed to further torture or ill-treatment; and in extreme
cases, by taking an active part in the interrogation. Because of their
unique social status, the presence of medical professionals in facilities
where torture or ill-treatment are carried out indicates the boundary
between the permissible and the impermissible; it grants ISA interrogators
a stamp of approval, whether explicit or tacit, that their conduct is
acceptable. Such behavior by doctors has far-reaching consequences for the
victims of torture or ill-treatment: not only do medical professionals
fail to serve as effective recourse for victim’s complaints of injuries
inflicted upon them by their interrogators or other authorities; their
conduct furthermore precludes the victim from presenting evidence which
can aid in pursuing justice through various legal and administrative
proceedings.
(
http://stoptorture.org.il/files/Doctoring%20the%20Evidence%20Abandoning%20the%20Victim_November2011.pdf
)
[12] Ibid.
[13] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1108
[14] http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869
[15] Ibid
[16] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52
[17] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=868
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