A CROWDof more than 100 doctors, campaigners and supporters handed a petition of 2,000 signatories, to the British Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health (RCPCH) last Friday.
The petition demands the institution speaks out for the release of their colleague, the paediatrician and Director of Gaza’s Kamaal Adwan Hospital, now a Palestinian prisoner, Dr Hussam Abu-Safiya from Israeli prison.
Calling out the leaders of the RCPCH, as collaborators and hypocrites, the protest chanted: ‘RCP you can’t hide, you’re involved in genocide!’
Speaking by video link from Palestine, Dr Abu Safiya’s son Ilias, urged the RCPCH to campaign for his father’s immediate release, saying: ‘This is an urgent call to all the honourable people present and the Royal College of Paediatricians, to every doctor who swore an oath to protect life, and to every person who believes in honouring human life.
‘My father has spent many long months in detention. His mental and his physical health is deteriorating day after day.
‘My father dedicated his life to saving the lives of children and, now he is the one who needs saving.’
Doctor Elaine Hughes, UK Consultant Paediatrician said: ‘I have a very simple message for the RCPCH “Remaining silent is not a neutral act. It is an act of immorality; it is a failure of our common humanity and is heard as a deafening rebuke to those who wait for our response.” Remaining silent is not an option,’ she concluded.
Earlier in her speech Dr Hughes said: ‘I stand here as a UK paediatrician to ask our Royal College, how we can remain indifferent in the face of such devastation and loss.
‘We can have empathy, but how can we understand the exhaustion, the fear, the unfathomable story that is Gaza today!’ She said that paediatricians can provide advocacy, a voice for children, as part of a paediatrician’s duty of care.
‘RCPCH has already gone beyond individual advocacy, with a willingness to petition our government, on clean air, on-line safety, and on the impact of austerity.
‘So in this context, how can we remain silent in the face of the catastrophic events in Gaza, in the West Bank and potentially now in Lebanon.
‘More than 30 children a day are being killed in this conflict that is a classroom of children every day. The loss of a future generation, future doctors, future health care workers, teachers, engineers, scientists, future parents and grandparents.
‘How can we remain silent when we see an entire health infrastructure dismantled and destroyed?
‘Almost 2,000 health care workers have been killed and many more injured, hundreds imprisoned – in detention without charge.
‘They were our friends and colleagues in global health who stayed behind when others left, because their community needed them.’
Doctor Jonathan Fluxman leading the chants, called: ‘Keep talking about Palestine! He listed the many doctors like Abu Safiyah who had stood by their patients in defiance of Israeli genocide, and were now being tortured and starved.’
He said that the International Paediatric Association had released a statement the month after Dr Abu Safiyah was detained in January 2025, calling for his release, but the British RCPCH did not support that statement.
‘No! They have said not one word about Dr Abu Safiyah. 560 days of starvation for Dr Hussam, and 560 days of silence from this institution, we will not accept it.’
Fluxman condemned the eighty-one Israeli doctors who signed the letter for hospitals in Gaza to be bombed, and the Israeli Medical Profession as collaborators, colluders and participants in genocide.
He said Israeli doctors had not condemned the torture and killing of doctors but had colluded and participated in genocide.
Therefore: ‘We are campaigning to kick Israel out of all international health organisations. They do not deserve to be amongst us.
‘Who would want to sit next to these monsters in a conference, when the week before they would have been going into those dungeons and prisons and saying: “Oh Nothing to see here!”’
Doctor Fluxman emphasised: ‘We are winning. We have totally destroyed their narrative. The whole world hates Israel. The huge majority of humanity stands with the Palestinians, in pole after pole.
‘So when you go back to your workplace, your trade unions, your local neighbourhood keep talking about Palestine. This is what the Palestinians tell us to do.
‘Put forward motions in your organisations and if the leadership block you, organise amongst the grass roots. Keep talking about Palestine, and we will see the day when Palestine is free.’
Another doctor said: ‘A medical institution earns its reputation by having the moral courage when it matters most.
‘A College of Paediatrics earns its reputation by defending children and caring for health workers, not by excusing itself by managing organisational risk, while health workers are utterly decimated.
‘If your reputation depends on refusing to condemn genocide, then it is not a reputation worth protecting.
‘We had high expectations of the Royal Colleges. We expected them to honour the humanitarian positions that they often so claim.’
He said British Institutions had a historical debt for setting up the destruction of the Palestinian people in the Balfour Declaration, in shaping Palestinian dispossession.
It was not a humanitarian failure it is colonial debt and when the Royal Colleges refuse to speak clearly for Palestinian children, Palestinian doctors they are continuing that legacy.
He said: ‘RCPCH’s silence on Doctor Abu Safiyah’s torture was “complicity by omission”.’
It has always been the weapon to bury justice, he said: ‘Is the RCPCH simply unable to comment on specific cases. No! They are unwilling to speak when the doctor is Palestinian.
‘This is cowardice dressed up in bureaucracy. It is not ethical leadership.
‘We demand the RCPCH speak for all the Palestinian health workers.
‘They must name and condemn apartheid, genocide and the healthicide of Gaza’s health care system.
‘Your silence is violence! It is political and as paediatricians of the college we want no more complicity in our name.’
