Medical staff provide treatment to an injured demonstrator at the Salmaniya hospital in Manama on February 17, 2011. (AP photo)

MANAMA - Bahrain's health ministry has announced that it will fire 23 medical staff members for supporting the anti-regime protests. 

The ministry also said that investigations are waiting for more than 420 other workers over their alleged connections with the protesters, Press TV reported. 

Moreover, the country's officials have said that suspended workers can only return to their jobs if they promise to follow government laws and regulations. 

On June 14, Robert Fisk wrote at The Independent, “Has the Khalifa family gone mad? Yesterday, the Bahraini royal family started an utterly fraudulent trial of 48 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses, accusing them of trying to topple the tin-pot monarchy of this Sunni minority emirate. The defendants in this flagrantly unfair military court are, of course, members of the majority Shia people of Bahrain. And since I was a witness to their heroic efforts to save lives in February, I can say -- let us speak with a frankness that the Bahraini rulers would normally demand -- that the charges are a pack of lies.”

Fisk added, “Doctors I saw, drenched in their patients' blood, desperately trying to staunch the bullet wounds of pro-democracy demonstrators shot in cold blood by Bahraini soldiers and police, are now on trial. I watched armed policemen refusing to allow ambulances to collect the wounded from the roads where they had been cut down.” 

“These are the very same doctors and nurses I stood beside four months ago in the Sulaimaniya emergency room, some of them weeping as they tried to deal with gunshot wounds the like of which they had never seen before.”

“’How could they do this to these people?’ one of them asked me. ‘We have never dealt with trauma wounds like these before.’ Next to us lay a man with bullet wounds in the chest and thigh, coughing blood on to the floor.” 

“The surgeons were frightened that they did not have the skills to save these victims of police violence. Now the police have accused the doctors and staff of killing the patients whom the police themselves shot.” 

“How could these fine medical men and women have been trying to "topple" the monarchy?” Fisk wrote.

Hundreds of public sector employees have lost their jobs since the anti-regime demonstrations against the Al Khalifa dynasty began in mid-February. 

Scores of protesters have since been killed and many more arrested, including doctors and nurses, in the violent US and Saudi-backed crackdown on peaceful protesters. 

Additionally, some doctors have been kidnapped by security forces of the regime. 

The United Nations Human Rights office has criticized the Bahraini regime for its violations of international law by cracking down on activists and medical staff. 

“It is vital that the authorities in Bahrain scrupulously abide by international standards. People should not be arbitrarily arrested, they should not be detained without clear evidence of their committed or recognized crime," said Rupert Colville, the UN's human rights spokesperson, in May. 

Meanwhile, witnesses have said that security forces in Bahrain's capital blocked roads around a former protest hub after clashes with pro-democracy demonstrators in the island.

According to AP, tanks and police vehicles surrounded Pearl Square, which had been the centerpiece for the anti-regime protests calling for greater rights from rulers in the strategic nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. The witnesses spoke on a condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals.

The blockades Thursday came after protesters in a Manama neighborhood called for a march back to Pearl Square, which was stormed by security forces several weeks after pro-reform demonstrations began in February.

The General Director of Bahrain's police announced Thursday night that eight members of the security forces were injured after attempting to control demonstrators.

According to the Bahrain Ministry of Interior, one policeman sustained a serious head injury and seven others were treated for minor injuries. 

Major protests have been crushed, but small-scale clashes have occurred nearly nightly for weeks.

Since the beginning of Bahrain's revolution, large numbers of anti-government protesters have poured into the streets across the Persian Gulf state, calling for more rights, freedom and wide-ranging political reforms in the political system of their country. 

According to local sources, dozens of people have been killed and hundreds arrested so far during the government clampdown on peaceful demonstrations.

< Prev		Next >