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khalil-secker
15th October 2012

My Political Hero: Dr Swee

The 4ft 11inch surgeon and human rights champion
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TLDR

Dr Swee is the most highly-achieving yet deeply humble person I’ve ever met. As a 4ft 11 Singaporean doctor who came to study orthopaedic surgery in London (a speciality dominated by 6-foot rugby players), she was sneered at. She ignored them and became the first female orthopaedic surgeon ever appointed at St. Bartholomew’s hospital.

Growing up she was a strong supporter of Israel, until they invaded Lebanon in 1982. “I could not cope because I just could not believe it. To say you wanted to flush out some terrorists was not good enough for me. If Lebanon had maybe a hundred terrorists, are you telling me that you have got to kill hundreds of thousands of people just to get those people?”

She went to work for Christian Aid treating the war-wounded in Lebanon. Around 3,000 Palestinian refugees lived in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila where she was put in charge of an orthopaedic department. Christian Phalangists – a right wing group in Lebanon who openly modelled themselves on Hitler’s facists – moved in and slaughtered everyone in the camps over a period of three days.

She spent three days and nights operating round-the-clock in a basement shelter. After an exhausting struggle to save every life possible, she was ordered out of the basement and onto streets which were littered with bodies.

The foreigners were all put before a wall where there were bulldozers. They were made to take off their overalls and put their belongings in a pile. Later she was told that this was a mock execution, but she had been so angry at the time that she didn’t realise. She’d been too busy loudly telling off the officer in charge, shouting, “How dare you go into my hospital? What are you going to do with my patients? If any of them lose their lives because of your soldiers, you just watch it!”

400,000 Israeli citizens demonstrated in Tel Aviv, angry because Israel was meant to be overseeing the refugee camps.

As a result of this public pressure, Israel called a Commission of Enquiry to identify who was to blame at which Dr Swee was asked to testify. Later she wrote the award winning book ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’ about what she had seen and set up the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. That was 30 years ago and she’s still going strong.

“I might not be a good surgeon but I have got the loudest mouth in town, and a rather effective one!  In 1986 I was critical of some of the military policies in Occupied Gaza and West Bank, and made my views known publicly”

When the Commissioner General told me, ‘You are upsetting quite a few people. If you are going back to Gaza, you will create a lot of problems for some of the colleagues you are working with.’ I assured him I was not important enough so that was when I said, ‘Fine. I will leave!’”

Medical Aid for Palestinians is a charity that combines humanitarian medical aid with human rights advocacy, which may perhaps seem like an awkward mix at first.

Consider the fact that out of 470 essential drug items in Gaza, 253 are out of stock. Consider the fact that bombings have destroyed Gaza’s sewage system, causing widespread infection and bloody diarrhoea – particularly amongst children. Medicine, like pretty much everything else in Palestine, has become extremely political.

 

Khalil Secker

Khalil Secker

Former reporter for The Mancunion, now Campaigns Manager.

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