Ang was born in
Penang, Malaysia but raised in
Singapore. She attended Kwong Avenue Primary School,
Raffles Girls' School, and the
National University of Singapore where she studied medicine. She then received a master's degree in Occupational Medicine in 1976.
[1]
In 1977, Ang married Singaporean human rights lawyer Francis Khoo. Two weeks after the marriage, she was briefly detained during a government crackdown on dissidents as the authority attempted to arrest her husband. She fled to
London to be with her husband and they were granted asylum there.
[3] She trained to be an orthopaedic surgeon in Britain, where she obtained her
FRCS (Eng) and completed her training in
Newcastle. She later became the first female consultant orthopaedic surgeon at
St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.
[1]
In August 1982, Ang responded to an appeal for medical personnel from
Christian Aid to treat war casualties in
Lebanon and went to work at the Gaza Hospital near the Sabra and
Shatila refugee camp in
Beirut.
[4][5] The following month, she became witness to the
Sabra-Shatila massacre during the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
[6]
She and two other hospital staff testified to
Israeli Kahan Commission on the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982.
[7] Ang would also testify to the massacre in front of the
Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission in 2013, during a hearing that eventually found the State of Israel guilty of
genocide.
[8]
With her husband, Francis Khoo, and some friends, Ang helped to form the British charity,
Medical Aid for Palestinians, following the 1982 massacres.
[5]