It never hurts to suck up to the boss.

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"Disability is articulated as a struggle... but disabled lives are multi-faceted - brimming with personality, pride, ambition, love, empathy, and wit."

Julian's constant outrage, disbelief at what he's seeing, and refusal to accept things as they are is also great. He never lets you forget how messed up this is, and I think it was a good opportunity to develop his character as well. It's one of the first really traumatic things that happens to him and the way he reacts to everything really shows it, along with the strength of his convictions and his stubbornness for doing what's right which he carries on right to the end of the series. His kindness also shines through when he helps the woman injured boy (against Sisko's objections) and the woman with diabetes in the processing centre.

Then there's Sisko, who tempers Bashir's outrage with (kind of paternal) pragmatism. He doesn't accept that things had to be that way and understands the wrongness of what he's seeing to its fullest extent, but unlike Julian, he knows what he can and can't do about it, and chooses to accept that there are some things he personally can't change but does everything he possibly can with the influence he has. This Includes taking a bunch of hostages at gun point (and it's actually crazy they had a Star Trek protagonist do that lol), which Julian is visually extremely uncomfortable about, and being prepared to give his life to ensure things get better. For me, he's the very image of a great Starfleet captain in these eps.

I have to also mention the obvious fact that both characters are people of colour who, despite being a decorated commander and a doctor, find themselves immediately written off as worthless by a white guard and discarded into a concentration camp. Meanwhile their white colleague ends up in a penthouse.