By Dr Jeffrey Abu Hassan
The Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia (IMAM) would like to express our deepest regret and concern over the incident in which our medical colleague, was allegedly assaulted while on duty within the vicinity of the hospital he was attached to, and continued to be repeatedly assaulted by an elite police team despite being in full medical outfit with identification on Oct 7.
We fully empathise with Dr Thanendran Renganathan, who has undoubtedly suffered unimaginable physical and psychological trauma. We hope that his predicament will receive the appropriate attention from all quarters including for his optimal counselling towards normalcy.
As the scenario portrayed, this was a medical doctor who was trying to grab a bite after a hard day’s work. A group of armed and black clad masked men ran towards him, and naturally he exhibited the classic flight reaction. He was chased, tackled down and assaulted as per his police report widely disseminated in social media.
While we appreciate that the police have a job to do, and considering that this was an elite unit who should have identified the suspects prior to the incident, this was a gross error of mistaken identity. We await the results of the ongoing investigations.
Notwithstanding, it still does not justify the assault of any citizen who is in custody and handcuffed. And especially after he identified himself as a medical personnel working in the adjacent hospital.
And he was also allegedly denied medical treatment for three hours. This is a deplorable denial of his basic human right.
What is also regretful, are the comments of the deputy Director-General of Health, after the incident was published by Free Malaysia Today.
A medical personnel under the MoH was assaulted in public in an apparent attempt to apprehend some hoodlums and we are asked to take it as a lesson learnt.
Are we to infer from this that when a group of fully armed men in black without identification run towards us, we are to just stand still? It takes an extremely brave or rather an extremely foolish man to do so!
The inference that the medical personnel had allegedly assaulted the men in black is quite strange as this is not borne out by the police report made out by the doctor involved.
We would have hoped for a more sympathetic ear from the deputy DG.
We wish and hope that that there will be a full investigation into this incident by all parties involved.
We would like to reiterate that the incident was a very unfortunate one. We regret that it actually happened in the first place and hope that it will never recur.
The police force and medical personnel virtually always work hand in hand professionally for the security and health of this nation and its citizens. We hope that this tradition will continue unabated despite this unfortunate incident.
Dr Jeffrey Abu Hassan is President of the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia (IMAM).
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