SIEV X Scrapbook – 16 December 2003

In a challenging and sometimes lonely personal struggle like the SIEV X cause , one’s resolve is strengthened by recalling famous people’s words of wisdom and courage. You realise that these kinds of struggles for justice and human dignity have been and are being fought by many good people and in many places.

This is a little scrapbook of some words that inspire me. Of course it is only a tiny selection of what could be included. Later I may add to it, but this is a start.

It begins with a reading from the Book of Wisdom that – the moment I heard it read out at a recent memorial service for a good colleague – I realised was also very much about the heroic people who died on SIEV X. This Book is said to have been written by King Solomon. We – Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike – can all share in its wisdom.

TK 16.12.2003

 

 

But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them.

In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure was taken for misery, and their going away from us, for utter destruction: but they are in peace. And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality.

Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them, and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust, he hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them.

The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds. They shall judge nations, and rule over people, and their Lord shall reign for ever.

They that trust in him shall understand the truth: and they that are faithful in love, shall rest in him: for grace and peace are to his elect.

- Book of Wisdom, Chapter 3 v 1-9, Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims (Catholic) version.

 

 

The struggle of the people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

- Milan Kundera, Czech author

 

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
- Robert Kennedy

 

From Winston Smith’s diary, April 4, 1984:

Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never –

- George Orwell, an extract from Chapter 1, "1984"

 

 

 

Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.
- Adam Michnik, Polish dissident , "Letters from Prison and other Essays"

 

 

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
- Shirley MacLaine

 

 

You gain strength, courage & confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

 

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

- Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792.

 

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

- Pastor Martin Niemoller

 

 

Those of us gathered here this morning join with fellow Australians around our country to say that we stand for something different. We grieve for the loss of 353 innocent lives on the SIEV X. We express our shame that so little has been done on an official level to find out the causes of those deaths and to make some reparation. We uphold the value of every human life; we recognize that we belong to one human family; we say that the strong should protect the vulnerable; that the more affluent should share their resources with the needy; that every person is our sister or our brother.

We come together to pray – as Christians, Muslims, members of other great religions, or maybe people struggling with faith, unable to see God’s goodness reflected in the world and people around them. We come together as people of good will wanting the best for every human being.

- Bishop Pat Power, Lakeside Remembrance Service, Canberra, 18 October 2003