Russia Has a Long and Cruel Record of Attacking Hospitals

[appalachiablue]

- Ukrainian emergency employees & volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from the maternity & children's hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/10/europe/russia-invasion-ukraine-03-10-intl/index.html
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- History News Network, The George Washington Univ., Leonard Rubenstein. 3/10/22. Source, Mother Jones. The author is a prof. of practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health & core faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Inst. of Bioethics. He is the author of Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War. -

The *photo of a pregnant woman, possibly in labor, being carried out of a destroyed maternity and children’s hospital struck by Russian forces in the city of Mariupol became yet another iconic image of Russia’s assault on civilians in its war against Ukraine. The high number of injuries, the sheer size of the craters caused by the explosion, the reports that it was heard a mile away, and the contemporaneous visual evidence easily refute Russia’s denials of waging war on civilians. Even childbirth was not exempt from Russia’s strategy in the war.

Attacks on hospitals and ambulances began on the first day of the war and have continued at a rate of about one or two per day, now totaling more than 60, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. The World Health Organization has already found sufficient evidence to confirm 24 of them on its dashboard of global attacks on health care. Doctors, emergency responders in ambulances, and patients have all been killed. Volunteers have been shoveling sand into bags and bringing them into hospitals to protect them, as much as possible, from the impact of heavy weaponry. Patients have been moved into dank basements that are usually considered inappropriate for care, just as a precaution.

Given Russia’s record, no one should be surprised by these atrocities. In recent decades, Russia has been among the worst perpetrators of attacks on health care in conflicts. In the war in Chechnya from 1999 to 2000, for instance, Russia destroyed or severely damaged hospitals in the capital, Grozny, and elsewhere while targeting doctors who provided care to all in need. In Syria, it joined the Assad regime in bombing and launching missile attacks against hospitals located in opposition-controlled areas; between the two perpetrators, more than 500 hospitals were hit. When Syrians began moving hospitals underground and in caves, Russia used 1,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs against them. In these wars, the attacks were part of a broader campaign not only to defeat an adversary but to punish or forcibly displace civilians for supporting Russia’s enemy.

The violence is not only morally abhorrent; it is also a war crime, whether the attack targeted health facilities or was part of assaults on civilians generally. For more than 150 years, international law has barred combatants from inflicting violence on hospitals. The prohibition preceded by almost a century the global compacts outlawing punishment for one’s ideas, arbitrary imprisonment, or torture. But from the Franco-Prussian Wars in the 19th century through two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and post-Cold War conflicts, the attacks have been a common feature of war and political conflict. In the period between 2016 and 2020, health facilities were attacked in war zones on average every other day.

One reason the attacks continue is because, no matter how repulsive they are, the perpetrators have always escaped accountability. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/182662
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- Read Entire Article At Mother Jones,
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/russia-has-a-long-cruel-history-of-attacking-hospitals-maybe-this-time-its-leaders-will-be-prosecuted/

[The Unmitigated Gall]

1. Russian war ethics are somewhere back in the 13th century.

Goddamn medievalists.

[appalachiablue]

2. Sounds right, middle ages in the 21st c.

[erronis]

3. War and Ethics. Seems a strange juxtaposition.

From the little I have read about, the episodes of ethics and morality and caring when in a hellish war are remarkable, and way too few.

Whether it is the heat of the battle, the hatred of someone you don't know, the revenge, or just following orders - killing and hurting the other is the norm.

Again, that's why armies like young people without experience or older people with psychological patholagies.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

5. Agree. It does seem strange, but there it is.

Washington forbade his officers and soldiers from torturing and abusing British captives, while the British housed their American prisoners in disease and rat-infested “prison ships”.
Treatment of prisoners of war and conduct of military forces towards civilian populations are probably the most basic ethical considerations in warfare. God knows we’ve f’ed it up a lot but next to Russia, we’re Goldilocks.
We derive most of our laws and principles from British Common Law and British Military Law. But, the Brits were never invaded by the Mongols, the Huns , probably the Turks with Hitler the cherry on top. Not to excuse war-criminal Pootler, who is perfectly aware of these advances and chooses to allow (probably command) his men to conduct themselves this badly.

[dalton99a]

4. Kick

[RicROC]

6. Those older Russian politicians learned their cruelty and non-concern for others

under the Soviet years. Just because they don't call themselves communists anymore, doesn't mean they have acquired an enlightened morality.

[appalachiablue]

7. I believe it, they're bad news and it could be different. Unfortunately

a medical license doesn't assure skill or concern for human life. I've experienced great doctors and also incompetents. Doctors from Cuba and their medical system are or were well regarded. They train elsewhere I've heard. Small example- years ago at a neighborhood social event, a football game, a Cuban- American MD did something to alleviate Dad's lingering neck pain in seconds, after he'd endured weeks of discomfort and consultations. He was so grateful and impressed.

[RicROC]

8. One of Michael Moore's films has a segment of the medical help

from Cuban doctors. Also, medications cost pennies at the local famacia.

[appalachiablue]

9. Good, I'll look for the film segment sometime. I'm pretty

sure Cuba's effective, low-cost health care system was instituted during - gasp! Fidel's regime.