We remember an IPPNW giant

[Former IPPNW Co-President and “godfather” of ICAN Dr. Ron McCoy died on 1 September at the age of 96. The IPPNW family mourns his loss and celebrates his life in a tribute that can be downloaded here. Following are excerpts from a remembrance of Ron written by his colleague and close friend Tilman Ruff.]

After being told the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had helped to end the Second World War, it was only when Ron read John Hersey’s Hiroshima as a medical student that he understood the nature and significance of those two bombings. “It stirred my conscience. I began to understand the indiscriminate, disproportionately destructive nature of atomic bombs. It was clear to me that nuclear weapons are illegal weapons of war under international humanitarian law and that they must be banned.”

Ron felt powerless until he read an article in the BMJ in 1986 which described the award of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The BMJ provided him the address of the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons in the UK and he became an overseas member. When he learned more about the work of IPPNW, he decided it was time to set up a Malaysian affiliate. In 1987, at the Annual General Meeting of the Malaysian Medical Association, he stood on a chair and announced to those having breakfast that a serious and credible organisation like IPPNW existed and that Malaysian doctors should join it. He circulated a sheet of paper and 32 doctors signed, giving their support to the idea which progressed soon after.

In 1995 when the International Court of Justice conducted hearings for its Advisory Opinion on the legal status of nuclear weapons, Ron was invited by the Malaysian government to help prepare its written submission to the Court and was included in its delegation to present its oral submission to the ICJ in The Hague.

In December 1995 the Australian government of Prime Minister Paul Keating invited Ron to be a member of the prestigious Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, together with 16 others, including Robert McNamara, Joseph Rotblat, General Lee Butler, Michel Rocard, Maj Britt Theorin and Qian Jiadong. Wishing to devote himself to the important work of the Commission, Ron decided to retire from his busy medical practice at Pantai Medical Centre. The Commission’s report remains as cogent today as it was then.

When the 2005 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in disarray in no small measure as a result of the intransigence of US President George W Bush, Ron was convinced that it was time to think outside the NPT box and act beyond the failed NPT process.

Four days after returning home from the NPT Review Conference, on 28 May 2005 Ron emailed the following open letter to IPPNW affiliates:

“There are lessons to be learnt from the landmines ban campaign. As you know, I have for some time been advocating lateral thinking and a new approach to nuclear disarmament, parallel to the deadlocked NPT process, which has once again been demonstrated at the UN this month, thirty-five years after the ratification of the NPT.

Although I realise that nuclear weapons are not strategically similar to landmines, I nevertheless believe that IPPNW must coalesce with other groups, find the support of like-minded governments, and launch an ‘Ottawa-style process’ for the elimination of nuclear weapons by working towards a Nuclear Weapons Convention. We already have a Biological Weapons Convention and a Chemical Weapons Convention. Why not a Nuclear Weapons Convention?

We can call it an International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, with the acronym ICAN. Let’s start working on this right now.”

Ron wrote in 2010: “Over forty years, I had the enormous privilege of looking after thousands of pregnancies and delivering about 20,000 babies. Each delivery was the beginning of another life and another family. I realized that I was carefully monitoring and nurturing a pregnancy for several months to ensure the birth of a healthy baby, and yet each baby was born into a world bristling with thousands of nuclear weapons. I was convinced that these babies deserved to live in a world without nuclear weapons.” He regarded working for a world freed from nuclear weapons as part of his duty of post-natal care as a complete obstetrician.

Ron spoke at the international launch of ICAN at the April 2007 NPT Preparatory Committee meeting in Vienna. Ten years later, he was in Oslo when ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017: “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”, the historic UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted in July that year.

Ron did all these things and more in an unassuming, humble, calm, kind, thoughtful and unegotistical way. In working with him over decades, he was unfailingly warm, supportive, encouraging, honest, sincere and thoroughly decent. You knew exactly where you stood with him. Always willing to listen and learn, always with a sincere invitation: “You must come and stay with us”.

A Tribute to Datuk Dr. Ronald Stephen McCoy (PDF, A4) (PDF, US letter)