PETALING JAYA – A Malaysian doctor – Dr Fauziah Hasan – is allegedly being detained by Israeli authorities, according to videos uploaded to YouTube by the Women’s Boat To Gaza initiative on Wednesday night.
“I am right now being detained illegally by the Israeli regime. I appeal to all the world leaders, the people of Malaysia and the Government of Malaysia and all peace-loving people throughout the world to exert all action to release us from this illegal detention by the Israeli regime” said Dr Fauziah in the video.
Her video was among several others featuring crewmembers of the boat uploaded on YouTube, which are believed to have been pre-recorded.
This follows an update from the official Women’s Boat to Gaza website on Wednesday which said that contact had been lost with the boat, named the Zaytouna-Oliva.
“At 3.58pm Central European Standard Time (9.58pm Malaysian Time) on 5 October, we lost contact again with the Zaytouna-Oliva and presume that the Israeli Occupation Navy has surrounded it in International Waters (latest recorded position: Lat+31.906033 Lon+33.757630) and has forced it off its course to Gaza,” said Women’s Boat To Gaza on it’s official website.
It added that aside from Dr Fauziah, 12 other women are aboard the boat.
“On board are 13 women, including Mairead Maguire, the 1976 Nobel peace laureate from Northern Ireland, Fauziah Hasan, a doctor from Malaysia, and retired US army colonel Ann Wright,” said Women’s Boat To Gaza.
Dr Fauziah, a MBBS graduate from the University of Tasmania in 1982 is a consultant at the Ampang Puteri Specialist Hospital, Kuala Lumpur.
Prior to Women’s Boat to Gaza, she was the Mercy Malaysia treasurer from 2000 to 2006, and she has participated in missions to Kosovo (1999), Maluku Indonesia (2000), Afghanistan (2001,2002,2003), Aceh (2005), Pakistan (2005) and Gaza (2009).
Dr Fauziah has also been active in Aqsa Syarif, a Malaysian humanitarian NGO in support of the Palestinians, which in 2015 became an agency under the umbrella of Humanitarian Care Malaysia (MyCare). She was Deputy Chairperson of Aqsa Syarif from 2010 and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of MyCare. Since 2011 she has also been the advisor of Rose2Rose (R2R), another MyCare agency.
She has three children and six grandchildren.
