by R.M.B. Senanayake

The attack on the human rights lawyer Weliamuna in the night where he is living with two small children show that danger is not far away from all citizens who uphold human rights and democratic norms. We the educated and influential in society have been silent when white vans abducted Tamils who ended up in police cells for questioning by the Terrorist Investigation Unit of the Police.

The President has appointed incompetent cronies to important posts in violation of the 17th Amendment. The Inspector General of Police is perhaps one of them if we go by his record of successive failures to enforce the law against influential criminals who have political patronage and protection. So the public cannot expect any effective action by him or his assistants. It may not be as bad as Caligula who put his horse in the Senate. But then Caligula’s horse had a track record.

We like to remind all decent human beings who believe in truth and justice what Pastor Niemoller said when the Gestapo came to arrest him in Nazi Germany when he was no longer protected by influential persons.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

We want to tell all professional men and all educated men of reason to wake up before it is too late. Let us not be driven to the position reminded by Ralph Chaplin:

“Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic, throng the coward and the meek who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak”

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