Press Action ::: Hospital Closings and the Geneva Convention

Monday, April 19, 2004

Hospital Closings and the Geneva Convention

By Abu Spinoza

Rahul Mahajan’s report from Iraq, “Hospital Closings and War Crimes,” is likely to be ignored by the corporate press. But it deserves to be read by anyone concerned about humanitarian issues. Mahajan finds that since the U.S. siege of Fallujah, it has bombed the power station and closed off the bridge that provides access to Fallujah’s main hospital.

He further reports that the U.S. military has closed off hospitals elsewhere, including Qaim. The U.S. military has shot at ambulances, placed snipers near hospitals, and tried to extract information from doctors about the injured patients as a tactic for rounding up resistance fighters.

The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly forbids the targeting of hospital and calls upon the parties to the conflict to respect the sanctity of hospitals.

Article 18 states:

Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

States which are Parties to a conflict shall provide all civilian hospitals with certificates showing that they are civilian hospitals and that the buildings which they occupy are not used for any purpose which would deprive these hospitals of protection in accordance with Article 19.

Civilian hospitals shall be marked by means of the emblem provided for in Article 38 of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 12, 1949, but only if so authorized by the State.

The Parties to the conflict shall, in so far as military considerations permit, take the necessary steps to make the distinctive emblems indicating civilian hospitals clearly visible to the enemy land, air and naval forces in order to obviate the possibility of any hostile action.

In view of the dangers to which hospitals may be exposed by being close to military objectives, it is recommended that such hospitals be situated as far as possible from such objectives.

Article 19 states:

The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.

The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants which have not yet been handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.

The attacks on hospitals ought to raise serious concerns. In light of these reports, it is appropriate to ask whether the U.S. military is committing grave war crimes in Iraq. The anti-war movement should try to prevent the occupation forces’ violation of not only international laws but also laws and norms of the countries engaged in the occupation by publicizing the facts and, if possible, by bringing appropriates legal charges against the perpetrators by making use of the national legal systems that are available to them.

Abu Spinoza is a columnist for Press Action.

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