Those Who Should Have (But Haven’t) Considered What Niemoller Said!
Emil van der Poorten
When I received from a friend a piece about the very recent investigation of the ethnicity of a prominent member of Sri Lanka’s publishing community by her local constabulary, I was struck by the fact that this lady was one among those whom I’d already categorized (stereotyped?) as among those who disapproved of Sri Lanka’s slide into fascism but who’d done nothing about it and would continue in that same indifferent mode.
To say that the content of her letter was disturbing would be to understate the case. However, suffice it to say that what she’d encountered was in no way surprising to anyone who’d paid even the slightest attention to the serious deterioration of the quality of life in Sri Lanka, with its descent into an indescribable state given the manner in which we started our independent years.
That letter described, in chilling detail, persistent efforts by her local police to ascertain her ethnicity and that of her family and neighbours of Islamic persuasion even though, while her name clearly indicated the connection to Islam, her demeanour and public persona certainly did not suggest even a hint of the Wahhabiultra-conservatism that many in her community are accused of.
That old lyric of the flower-power years asked of those who turned a Nelsonian eye on the abuse of civility and civilization, “When will they ever learn?” I cannot but invoke that line given that it is so appropriate in its application to those who believe themselves to be politically-sophisticated Sri Lankans.
I have in the past raised this issue, particularly pointing an accusatory finger at such as the “forums” that spend their time tut-tutting around the periphery of the worst abuses of the last vestiges of the rule of law in this land. And suffice it to say that I will not cease to raise this as a damned serious lapse on the part of those with any pretensions to the defence of law, order and elementary decency in this country.
Admittedly, the forces of civilisational darkness keep getting more powerful by the day because the more the-powers-that-be recruit from the ranks of the violent and outright criminal element in our society the more powerful they are likely to get because the recruited individuals and groups, by their very criminality, are increasingly dependent on an all-powerful government for their very survival. Need one spell out then that, when the political tide turns, the likely fate that awaits those who have deliberately visited mayhem, up to and including death, on those who have stood in their path to self-aggrandisement and unbridled power and authority? Even though few of that number have an excess of brain cells to apply to a contemplation of their likely fate when the tide turns, they are not so stupid as to believe that anything but a “sticky end” awaits them when Sri Lanka’s “Judgement Day” arrives. Read More
