UK
Gaza protesters rally for doctor who shared KKK video
Demonstrators rallied in London for Dr Swee Chai Ang after the BMA revoked a speaking invitation
April 4, 2025 14:30
Demonstrators rallied in London for Dr Swee Chai Ang after the BMA revoked a speaking invitation
April 4, 2025 14:30A protest broke out outside the British Medical Association (BMA) headquarters in London on Friday in support of a doctor who had previously endorsed an antisemitic video produced by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Dr Swee Chai Ang, 76, an orthopaedic surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust and a founding trustee of UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), was barred from addressing the BMA’s Medical Students Conference after it emerged she had shared antisemitic material.
In 2014, Ang sent an email endorsing a video produced by white supremacist and former KKK leader David Duke. She later claimed she had been unaware of Duke’s identity or his connections to the Ku Klux Klan.
In 2008, she proposed the creation of a “defence force for Gaza” in a blog post for the Lancet Global Health Network. The article, titled “The wounds of Gaza” and co-written with Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, was taken down in 2009 due to factual inaccuracies, according to a removal notice issued by the publisher at the time.
Despite claims circulating online that Ang was informed of her ban from the conference with just 48 hours’ notice, the BMA stated that Ang had been told in December last year that her invitation was rescinded, "after we became aware of reports that Dr Ang had previously shared material, that she did not author, which was antisemitic."
Ang accused the BMA of “shutting down free speech.” She said in a statement: “My message is one of peace and humanity, not divisiveness. I am committed to my British patients in the NHS and my Palestinian patients through MAP for the same reasons, a duty of care towards their wellbeing.
"What sort of example is an organisation setting when it lets pernicious politics interfere with a message of caring for one’s patients?”
Abu-Sittah, the controversial plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University who delivered a tearful eulogy for the co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, accused the BMA of having “sunk to new depths of moral cowardice and genocide enablement” by cancelling Ang’s talk.
Ang vowed to speak outside BMA House at the time her original talk was due to take place, and dozens of pro-Gaza demonstrators gathered with loudspeakers for what they described as a “protest against censorship”.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission, a pro-Iran non-profit group that helps organise the annual anti-Israel Quds Day march in London and campaigned for a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, said on its website that it supported the rally.
Defending its decision in a statement on X on Friday, the BMA said: “We are sorry that Dr Ang is disappointed about not being able to speak at the Medical Students Conference, but disappointed by her decision to hold a protest about it.
“In December of last year, we wrote to Dr Ang advising her that we were withdrawing the invitation to speak and in that correspondence, we carefully and clearly outlined the reasons for our decision. We advised her that our decision to withdraw the invitation was made after we became aware of reports that Dr Ang had previously shared material, that she did not author, which was antisemitic. When the invitation to speak was made, we were not aware of these reports. The BMA is happy to release full information if invited to do so by Dr Ang.”
