UN told to exclude US in probe panel on MSF Hospital in Afghanistan

October 11, 2015 – Immediate-past president of Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, Dr Steven Oluwole on Sunday called on the United Nations(UN) to exclude the United States from investigating panel that would look into the assault on a hospital facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

The hospital is owned by an international organisations, Medecins Sans Frontieres (popularly called Doctors without Borders) and was attacked by the US military, during which doctors, nurses, patients and other staff were either killed or maimed.

The International President of MSF, Dr. Joanne Liu, had in reaction to the attack said, “No warnings were issued to non-combatants to evacuate the facility, if it is assumed or alleged there were combatants hiding in the facility.

“It is, therefore, cowardly for any modern military to repeatedly hit health facility under such pretext. Our patients burned in their beds, MSF doctors, nurses, and other staff were killed as they worked. Our colleagues had to operate on each other.”

Oluwole in a statement obtained condemned the attack, stressing that allowing the US military or President Barrack Obama to be part of the investigators would amount to “injustice”

He said, “What is the collateral of the military of the USA that will shock and still the world? The United Nations will fail the people of Afghanistan, the volunteers of MSF, and indeed every human of free conscience, if the U.S. military, and its Commander-in-Chief are allowed to investigate and sit in judgment over their assault on a medical facility! Nothing less than criminal investigation will be appropriate as it is the character of the offending military.

“The seemingly cold, calculated, and repeated aerial assault on Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which lasted for about an hour on October 3, 2015, is difficult to describe as a mistake by a military that boasts of the latest navigational technology.”

He said the deafening silence of global and national health organisations and societies to a tragedy of this magnitude illustrates the racist and class ideology that defines the world politics at present.

The MDCAN ex-President said, “Had this being the health facility of any of the world great powers, their military would not have waited for any investigation before declaration of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Not only the military commanders would have been guilty, the Commander-in-Chief would have been destined for the Hague. But, it is the health facility of MSF; so allegations of war crime and crime against humanity is absurd until the offending military investigates its own crimes and sit in judgment of its own case!

“The dead, maimed, and wounded were nothing more than collateral damage to the military of a nation whose political and ideological bearing are impaired. What has happened to a nation whose creed is “In God We Trust”? What turned it to a nation of “do unto them what we never wish done to us”? What turned it to a nation that can endure its military using unmanned crafts to kill several innocent young couples at their wedding ceremonies since 2001?

“What turned its military from a force of liberation to a force of oppression and spread of terror? It is, therefore, an unfortunate irony that a nation that was founded on the principles of freedom, liberty, and respect for human rights could engage in the reckless act of killing patients, nurses, and doctors.”