1st of August 2009

The 1st of August 2009 has been a special day in so many different ways for me.

The First of August each year is the Swiss National Day, and as you know, Switzerland is my place of origin. On that day in 1291 – yes 1291 – 718 years ago, the ordinary Swiss people of Uri , Schwyz and Unterwalden (three Cantons in today’s Central Switzerland), farmers, traders, craftsmen, afraid to become subjects again of the House of Habsburg after Rudolf of Habsburg, the first German emperor had died, swore an oath to help each other against anyone attempting to subjugate them.

The legend goes that on that day in 1291 they ousted all overlords, chased them from their castles, their land, and as a sign that they had freed themselves they lit fires on mountain tops to signal to the others that they had succeeded. So Swiss people for a little more than a hundred years have been celebrating this day in Switzerland with huge bonfires on each hill, mountain top, in village places and other places where people usually congregate, and nowadays also sometimes with splendid fireworks, particularly in the cities, to reaffirm their freedom from all overlords.


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That much for Switzerland.

In Malaysia, on the 1st of August 2009, other significant things have been happening. As many as 20,000 people have been demonstrating against an oppressive law, the Internal Security Act (ISA), a law that allows for incarceration of anyone without trial. The Government tried to suppress the demonstration by setting up roadblocks on roads leading into Kuala Lumpur and arresting people who had t-shirts etc. with slogans against the ISA even before any demonstration had begun. A group of NGOs also had announced their counter-demonstration, in support of the ISA. The Abolish-ISA demonstration was brutally squashed by the police with teargas and water cannons; but the demonstrators had made their point!



On the same day, in the Songket room at Damansara Specialist Hospital, another event took place. MSRI had organized on that day (without having known of the demonstration when organizing the event) a forum with four medical students from Universiti Islam Antarabangsa, who had done their elective posting at Haifa Hospital, in Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp in the south of Beirut, Lebanon, in May and June. They had chosen to go there in response to the attack on Gaza in early 2009. MSRI had supported their stay in Lebanon financially as a part of MSRI’s programme of medical aid and other support for Palestinian refugees. The forum was to inform interested Malaysians on the situation of health care in the refugee camps in Lebanon and the kind of life Palestinians have in those camps.



The event was not well attended. Just a dozen or so people turned up. Did potential participants join the demonstration instead, or were they just too scared to come out of their houses? We will never know.



In the Welcome Speech, I quoted from a book, published by MSRI titled: “I painted the snow black, because we are afraid of the days”, which contains many stories of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. In the preface, written by the late Dato’ Dr. Alijah Gordon, MSRI’s founder and chairman, all medical volunteers who went to serve in the camps from 1987-95 in Lebanon were mentioned. I wanted to show at the forum that MSRI has a long history of sending medical volunteers to the refugee camps in Lebanon, was in fact the first Malaysian NGO to do so.

So, let me quote here the same passage I had chosen for the Forum:

“On Hari Raya, I [Dr. Alijah Gordon] sat in the home of a Malay journalist with Bernama. But I could not share the day. The more I saw Malaysians cheerfully eating and laughing, oblivious to what was happening in the camps (in Lebanon), the more soul-sick I became. I told my host I had to leave, which disturbed him and he insisted on knowing why. When I shared with him my revulsion, he asked what I wanted to do about it, and I said I had the feeling to go to the press and beg support from the Malaysian people for the besieged Palestinians in the camps. Zulkafly Baharuddin’s response was that on the next day he would organize a Press Conference so that I could do precisely that. From the time of the television coverage our phones never stopped ringing. … Malaysians poured in empathy and financial support to send medical volunteers and medicines to the camps. …

By July [1987] we were able to put our first team on the plane: four Malaysians: Staff Nurse Dolly Fong, Hospital Assistant Tengku Mustapha Tengku Mansur, Nurse Hajah Rosnah Nayan, and Staff Nurse Mathina Bee Ghulam Mydin. At the time journalists were not allowed into the camps, so we sent Zulkafly Baharuddin in as an ‘ambulance driver’ that he might feed back information to the Malaysian people. The second team, dubbed the “Magnificent Seven” left for Beirut on 30 August, included Staff Nurse Pok Looi, Acupuncturist Hor Fah Thye, Budik Busu, an ex-army Medical Assistant, Staff Nurse Hamidah Ghazalli, Dentist Dr. Mohd Yusuop Ali, Hospital Assistant Dr. R. Naidu and ex-army Medical Assistant Ahmad Bakri.
When all foreign aid workers were ordered out of Lebanon, Dolly Fong and Pok Looi opted to remain in Burj al-Barajneh, as did Hamidah Ghazalli in Rashidiyeh, the most southern camp. [They did not leave their medical posts even when coming under heavy military attack.] Staff nurse Pok Looi remains to this day working in a camp clinic. She is married to a Palestinian and has a Palestinian son, Jihad.

19 Malaysian volunteers served over the coming 8 years [in the refugee camps in Lebanon]. Eventually we opened our own free Dental Medical Clinic in Bar Elias. No one in need was turned away, be they Palestinian, Lebanese, Roma, or even a Syrian soldier. The volunteers were Buddhist Chinese, Muslim Malay, Hindu Indian, and later a Christian Chinese. When I went to visit the volunteers I found them with their arms wrapped around one another, closer than any family. There was no divisive race or religion, only humanitarian unity.”

What comes to mind when reading the above excerpt is that ultimately it does not matter what colour of skin or religion or political affiliation we have; ultimately, what counts is how we treat our fellow human beings who are suffering, the unfortunate and poor, the downtrodden, and the suppressed. A good way to begin is by honoring the tenets of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.