Charlie Clements (1945 - )
Fri Nov 30, 1945
Charlie Clements, born on this day in 1945, is a retired American physician and human rights activist who was committed to a psych ward after refusing to fly missions in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
The decision came after flying more than 50 missions as a pilot in the war, and Clements refused to participate in the invasion of Cambodia on moral grounds. The Air Force responded by committing him to a psychiatric hospital, and he was subsequently declared to have a 10% mental disability and discharged.
Afterward, Clements became a trained physician, connecting the struggle for social justice to his medical practice. After learning of the U.S.-backed death squads in El Salvador, Clements traveled to an area controlled by the Salvadoran guerrilla resistance group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), to care the wounded.
Dr. Clements has served as president of both the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and Physicians for Human Rights, a US-based not-for-profit that uses medicine and science to document and advocate against mass atrocities and severe human rights violations around the world.
- Date: 1945-11-30
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.americanswhotellthetruth.org.
- Tags: #Birthdays.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org