PHR Student Program South Regional Hub

Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran sent a letter to Iranian authorities on November 25 to ask for a full, transparent and independent investigation into the suspicious death of Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani, a physician who had examined prisoners wounded and killed during the 2009 Iranian election protests. Dr. Pourandarjani, 26, reportedly died of a heart attack in his sleep at police headquarters in Tehran on November 10.

The letter states:

We strongly urge that this investigation be thorough, impartial and independent and we also urge you to ensure that internationally respected forensic experts be invited to assist in such investigations. We respectfully draw to your notice that experienced forensic specialists from Physicians for Human Rights, would be willing to assist in the investigation.

Dr Pourandarjani graduated with distinction from the University of Tabriz and was doing his two-year national service at the Kahrizak detention center in Tehran during the June 2009 protests.

Many protestors were held in Kahrizak where they were allegedly tortured and ill treated. At least three detainees reportedly died of their injuries, including Mohsen Ruholamini, the son of a senior conservative politician. Following his death, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered the closure of Karhizak. Although Iranian authorities have promised to investigate the ill treatment of detainees at Kahrizak, no prosecutions have yet been announced.

The Washington Post reported on November 18:

A parliamentary committee plans to issue a report soon on the Kahrizak prison, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said. The makeshift detention center was closed in July on the orders of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, because of substandard conditions.

The prison became the focus of a rare investigation into police conduct after the death of Mohsen Rouholamini, the son of a former senior Health Ministry official. Authorities said he and two others died of meningitis, but Rouholamini’s father said his son was tortured to death.

Former presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, a Shiite cleric, publicly accused security forces in August of having tortured and raped detainees in Kahrizak, an allegation that government officials denied. In a raid on Karroubi’s office in September, security forces confiscated witness reports, names and addresses.

Dr. Pourandarjani had reportedly examined Mr. Ruholamini two days before he died. The doctor reportedly stated to Iranian MPs: “He was brought to me after being physically and severely tortured. He was in a grave physical condition and I had limited medical supplies, but I did my best to save him. It was then that I was threatened by the authorities of Kahrizak that if I disclose the cause of death and injuries of the detainees, I will cease to live.”

Defending colleagues at risk is at the core of PHR’s work. Physicians for Human Rights was founded in 1986 after Dr. Jonathan Fine and a group of US physicians visited Chile to advocate for the release of imprisoned health professionals. Since then, PHR has rigorously defended health professional colleagues and pressured governments for their release, supplementing secondary material with firsthand research and investigation.

Homeland Security official Beth Gibson tried to put a kinder face on immigration detention health care in a November 9 talk to health professionals at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in Philadelphia. Instead of making detention center health staff pre-clear, and therefore pre-justify, every medical procedure that is referred to health professionals outside the prison walls, Homeland Security policy under consideration, according to Gibson, would devise a list of treatments that are “pre-approved.” Only more unusual services — such as CAT scans — would require special advance approval.

This is welcome news from Ms. Gibson, who, as Senior Councilor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security John Morton, surely appreciates the human costs of unjustified delays in detention health care that have been reported in the press and by human rights groups.

Still, the policy doesn’t go far enough in the opinion of a number of health professionals who attended the APHA session, chaired by detention health expert Homer Venters, MD, at which Ms. Gibson spoke. One participant called for health professionals to support comprehensive immigration reform, which would decrease the number of persons in the US who are amenable to detention in the first place. Leaders in the Jail and Prison interest group of APHA also called on health professionals to become much more involved in supporting reforms to immigration detention policy.

Washington Director, John Bradshaw, was recently interviewed by PressTV about PHR’s new report, Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report.

A team of PHR doctors authored the white paper, which details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees’ reaction to interrogation methods. Physicians for Human Rights is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists.

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Physicians for Human Rights are pleased to invite you to
a training for health professionals on how to diagnose, evaluate and document the physical and psychological after-effects of torture and other severe human rights violations.

This is a great opportunity to gain a thorough introduction to working with asylum seekers or to enhance your skills.

Not able to make it to Florida? Please share this invitation with a friend or colleague who may be interested.

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 6.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits.^TM (Physicians should only claim credits commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.)

Aiding Survivors of Torture:

Medical and Psychological Documentation of Asylum Seekers

Saturday, October 24, 2009

8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Mailman Center for Child Development
8th Floor Auditorium

Space is limited, so preference will be given to board certified and state licensed physicians.

Registration is required so please register today!

(If you’d like to host a training in your area, please contact Jennie Baldé at asylum [at] phrusa [dot] org.)

It’s a script for a great horror story — or nightmare. Being:

1. mentally ill,
2. indigent,
3. jailed, perhaps indefinitely, and
4. without a lawyer or guardian or anyone to speak for you?

And it’s happening right now in America.

Indigent mentally ill persons are placed in immigration detention and ordered deported from the United States every day. They have no right to a free lawyer nor to a court-appointed representative to speak on their behalf. Many have stories like Xiu Ping Jaing: an immigrant who fled human rights abuse in her home country only to be caught in a system dubbed by one expert the “American gulag.”

Other mentally ill people in immigration detention are not immigrants at all: they’re US citizens who, without help, can be detained for years or deported away from family members who were never informed of the action taken and are frantic to find their missing loved ones.

For many human rights problems, the solutions are complex. This isn’t one of them. In July, PHR joined human rights groups across the United States in asking Attorney General Eric Holder to take common-sense steps:

1. appoint lawyers for mentally ill detainees who can’t afford them,
2. set up a fair process to determine individuals’ competency to face deportation hearings, and
3. appoint guardians ad litem for individuals found incompetent.

In ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the US agreed that

all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person (Art. 10(1)).

The Obama Administration can, and must, act now to ensure that the mentally ill in our immigration jails are treated with the dignity they deserve.