Saddam regime used medics for rights abuses

By: Mohamed Ali

CHICAGO: A survey that documented the scope of the former Iraqi regime's human rights abuses said almost half of all families in Shiite southern Iraq were subjected to violent human rights abuses by the-then ruling Ba’ath Party.

Nearly one in two Iraqis surveyed said they or a family member had been the victim of beatings, torture, gunshot wounds, kidnappings, killings and disappearances since 1991.

According to the survey released Tuesday by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights organization the state-sponsored violence against the civilian population in the south of the country was at its worst between 1991 and 1993.

The group also verified that physicians reluctantly participated in the state's reign of terror out of fear of Saddam's feared paramilitary Fedayeen force, and with the threat of imprisonment, torture and disappearance hanging over them.

More than two thirds of a group of almost 100 doctors canvassed by the organization in the southern part of the country acknowledged that torture was an extreme problem. And while most denied participating in the abuses themselves, 50 percent said physicians were involved in amputating ears as a form of punishment, 49 percent said their peers had falsified medical records and 32 percent had falsified death certificates.

The surveys of almost 2,000 Iraqi civilians and 98 physicians were conducted in June and July 2003, just three months after US forces invaded Iraq, overthrowing the former Iraqi regime.

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