By Masood Hussain
SRINAGAR
Monday evening witnessed a strange situation when five CRPF personnel drove their injured colleague to the nearby SKIMS for treatment. He was injured in the main chowk and was hit by a stone. A group of youth, mostly attending the injured, escorted the bleeding jawan to the hospital emergency but made their intentions public that they will beat his colleagues.
For hospital authorities it was a terrible situation. They are supposed to take care of the injured and not guard the attendants. They lack that kind of security. Police got the whiff of the emerging crisis and surrounded the emergency exits. It could have triggered another crisis. By then, the CRPF men had been escorted to a room by hospital management. It took almost half an hour to convince the angry youth, mostly attendants of injured being treated inside, to calm down and escort the CRPF personnel.
This was the latest incident on enforcing the writ in the medical sphere, premises that should ideally remain conflict neutral.
But Kashmir is witnessing such instances.
It all started on Saturday when a state police posse led by an officer stopped an ambulance in Pampore town. The vehicle was carrying an injured person from Kulgam and was rushing to get the patient in time to Srinagar. It was stopped; cops barged into the ambulance and dragged some of the attendants out. They were ruthlessly beaten by the officer and his guards, forced into a gypsy and driven to the police station.
The incident was key to the disturbances in the town that eventually led to various injuries, a few critically.
Kashmir Life newsroom could not immediately get the confirmation of the incident till a video clip surfaced. The clip should have convinced the tension-managers to lodge an FIR and book the official. But it is yet to happen.
That was not the only incident in Pampore. Later that day, the same officer allegedly raided the local hospital – one of the best performing in the area, and tried to arrest a person whom his attendants wanted to be immediately treated there, given his deteriorating condition. The patient was being driven again from south Kashmir Kulgam. Doctors who talked to Kashmir Life said when they failed to manage the enraged cops, they eventually rescued the injured, pushed him back to their own critical care ambulance and asked him to flee to Srinagar. Nobody knows if the same injured died in the SKIMS later.
Another video clip that went viral on social media, despite the bandwidth ban, suggested a group of security-men throwing stones on an ambulance after checking and permitting it to go ahead.
There were two other similar incidents – one in Awantipore and another in Belou Pulwama. In both the cases the security men on road stopped ambulances, beat the inmates and delayed the trauma cases to the hospitals. In case of Awantipore, the ambulance was damaged to the extent that the driver had to shift the patient in Pampore to another ambulance as his own vehicle was almost unserviceable at that moment. In another case an ambulance driver, ferrying a bullet hit from Bejbehara, was beaten to the extent that he fell unconscious. It was attendant of the injured, who was also beaten, but knew driving that the patient could the hospital.
Ambulance drivers who have always risked their lives every time Kashmir is caught in the unrest frenzy are feeling it increasingly difficult to ferry the injured. Newspaper reports suggest that already 25 ambulances got damaged in the attacks, mostly by the security men and police, while ferrying the injured. In Islamabad, at least one ambulance driver has survived a serious bone injury and is unable to work. There is at least one case in which the protesters in a Chadoora village obstructed the movement of an ambulance carrying an injured.
Doctors say the obstruction in the passage of ambulance means playing with the person in trauma. Normally the trauma patient has just an hour – doctors term it the ‘golden hour’. Owing to massive blood loss, if the person lands in right hands it helps doctors to save a life. Any delay means playing with their lives.
The marked difference between the protracted 2010 unrest and last four days is that earlier protestors remained neutral to the movement of the injured and medical personnel. Then, the crisis had reached a level that ambulances would only ply and drive injured to Srinagar after 11 pm because they were vandalized by the security men if they attempted driving to Srinagar during the day.
Unrest in 2010 witnessed 46 ambulances being seriously damaged and more than a dozen drivers surviving injured. One of them, a driver from Pattan, was actually fired upon but the bullet stuck in his seat.
A study carried out by the doctors on drivers of major Srinagar hospitals in October 2010 suggested that 83 percent of them experienced threat of physical harm, 54 percent were physically assaulted and nearly 32 percent reported evidence of psychological morbidity associated with their jobs.
“One ambulance was fired at by the police while located at a short distance from his hospital,” the study said. “All drivers reported that arguments with police and paramilitary personnel were routine, while arguments with the protesting crowds occurred occasionally.”
The study said that all drivers noted that they were afraid to move out in ambulances, a fear that became accentuated during nights. “Twelve of the drivers reported that they had been caught in work situations in which they felt a threat to their lives,” according to the study. “To avoid troublesome spots and aggressive security pickets, the drivers had become adept at route avoidance, even if it meant driving an extra distance.”
But in last few days even the young civilian mobs are trying to behave the same way.
Authorities must seriously think how not to convert hospitals, especially the SMHS hospital a den for hunting the suspects. Every time an ambulance drives into the premises, the cops surround it. They may have legitimate requirement of knowing the details (one report said it was vital for medical help and compensation) but the way they are displaying their urgency is adding to the huge mistrust that dominates the streets. Earlier, there were some arrests from the hospital also that has reinforced the belief that hospitals are unsafe for conflict injured.
This “hunt” for suspects in hospital premises have led to a new trend among protesting youth that they avoid SMHS, SKIMS, Bone & Joint and JVC for the fear of the sleuths. Many people in last few years have survived with damages, mostly the opthomological cases from Srinagar city, because of delay in reporting to hospitals. Some of them have stayed home and flown outside the state to stay away from the police records. Even hospital officials are being requested by their attendants to number their patients rather than identifying them on papers. But this reporter did not have any idea if at all officials are acceding to these kind of requests. This trend is not only inhuman but has added to the surging trust deficit.
This was the main reason why the youth caught and beat the group of sleuths in SKIMS on Monday.
On Sunday, the resident doctors said in a statement that the cops fired tear-smoke shells into the SMHS premises as a result of which serious problems were reported by the people suffering with respiratory issues, at least in four cases. They also said that the intervention in the movement of ambulances has cost some of the injured their lives, partly because of the massive loss of blood and wastage of time in inspecting them by the police midway.
Every time, Kashmir is witnessing unrest, its hospitality remains faith neutral. Hundreds of tourists and pilgrims are being fed by the host population from their own earnings for the last three days. Nigeen Club is one such glorious instance.
Why cannot our hospitals exhibit the same neutrality? When somebody is injured, he ceases to be a combatant. It is as truer for a cop as it is for a protester. There are thousands of cases in which the conflict injured civilians were treated by the doctors at the 15-base hospital and the police hospital. Do not shut the doors for an injured, regardless of who the injured is for whom the facility is. Is anybody listening?
