THE Germans first heard “The Last Sermon” delivered by Lutheran pastor Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) on Jan. 6, 1946 before an attentive, jampacked audience at the Confessing Church in Frankfurt, Germany. He had survived seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Originally known as “First They Came,” the sermon has evolved into a polished poem by different translators in different languages, including this one in English:
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 the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
It was about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power and the subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group. Alarmed, the pastor defied fear and emerged as an outspoken public foe of Führer Adolf Hitler, under whom Germany evolved from an anti-communist state into a totalitarian state.
It is not the purpose of this column, however, to refresh the atrocities inflicted by Hitler on a suppressed nation. The poem reproduced above is simply aimed at dramatizing the fear of an apathetic people who opted to hear no evil, say no evil and see no evil in their oppressive leader until it resulted in the slaughter of six million Jews.
Don’t we find ourselves similarly apathetic because we are in no immediate danger of being “salvaged”, arrested or charged with trumped-up crimes?
Thousands of suspected drug addicts and pushers have been killed in “shootouts” with law enforcers. In a few cases, overwhelming public opinion in favor of the victims forced the truth out, as it did in the case of 17-year-old student Kian Lloyd Delos Santos – gunned down by Caloocan City cops desperate for “performance”.
In that month of August 2017, public outcry against the perpetrators was so strong that the otherwise quiet politicians, including a few senators and congressmen, condemned the three “barbaric” policemen.
But it was from their colleague Leila de Lima that the senators learned a more perplexing “lesson” from her “collusion” with drug dealers. The “lesson learned” was that as chair of the Senate’s committee on justice, she had made the mistake of probing the extrajudicial killings done in Davao during the incumbency of then mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
No problem with the chairman that came after him, Sen. Richard Gordon, who – in only one short hearing – saw no evidence nor tattoo linking President Duterte’s son Paolo to the P6.4-billion worth of shabu smuggled from China.
No problem with the “manageable” House.
There was no public outcry, not even among allies and other politicians in Iloilo City, when then Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog was repeatedly linked by President Duterte to the illegal drug trade. The mayor consequently flew out of the country a few months into his last term, obviously fearing for his life.
The media – whether streamline or social – remains to be the freest stage on which to express uncensored opinions within undefined limits known only to celebrity journalists like Rappler’s Maria Ressa.
While we in media are still free to damn the government’s plan to declassify the “narco list” of suspects presumed to be innocent, until when will most Filipinos hear no evil, say no evil and see no evil? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
