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Ethical dilemma
Sharia punishment, treatment, and speaking out
In 1997 an Afghan surgeon who was being paid by the International Committee of the Red Cross but who was working in a Ministry of Health hospital was taken by the local authorities to a marketplace. There he amputated the hand of a person who had been convicted under sharia law. Following an appeal by the international committee to the Taliban authorities, an agreement was eventually reached that ensured that neither hospitals assisted materially by the international committee nor staff paid by it would be involved in this practice...
Subsequent requests made by the authorities to the assisted hospitals to provide an ambulance or surgical instruments to perform public amputations were refused. Many of the international committee’s personnel working with and training Afghan staff were health professionals from Western countries and they faced a dilemma in treating people brought to hospital after having suffered an amputation under sharia. Did treating these victims constitute offering support to a process of torture or cruel and degrading treatment, or was it treating a patient in need of urgent surgical care?...
...Preserving life and alleviating suffering
Médecins Sans Frontières, like the International Committee of the Red Cross, does not totally oppose sharia. At Médecins Sans Frontières we believe that, as a humanitarian organisation working within a variety of different cultural systems, we should be extremely careful about stating opinions about other cultures because our opinions could easily be interpreted as imposing Western cultural values. We accept that there are different interpretations of cultural values and norms and believe that great sensitivity is required in responding to these differences.Yet, although we do not oppose sharia, we are strongly opposed to the types of corporal punishment which are permitted under sharia, such as stoning and amputations.
The organisation’s opposition to these punishments has its basis in their danger to a person’s health. These punishments, by their very nature, cause irreversible physical damage and cause severe physical and mental suffering and sometimes death.
Consequently, the organisation decided that it would never be involved in corporal punishment or the preparation for it. This applies to all of the organisation’s health personnel, including staff who have been hired locally and the staff at non-governmental organisations with whom Médecins Sans Frontières works in partnership. Clearly this also means that the organisation’s health personnel will never provide certifications for fitness for detainees to undergo any punishment that may adversely affect their physical or mental health, a practice which is expressly forbidden by the United Nations’ 1982 principles of medical ethics.2-3However,
once an amputation has taken place, a person becomes a patient in need of medical care, which the organisation would supply.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127048/