| Open Letter to Newspapers - 5th Jan '10 |
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Dear editors,
We all wish to improve relations with countries whose human rights records are not what they should be, and sometimes this can be done from within, by forging friendship and business links to promote understanding between nations.
However, in the aftermath of the execution of a man who unknowingly committed a crime in one country after being deceived by criminals in another, it is important that we, as a civilised people, make our feelings known when such a barbaric act is carried out on someone with a mental illness.
Next month our country will commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, and I am reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller who pointed out that it was because no one spoke out when jewish families, people with disabilities, homosexuals and others deemed undesirable started disappearing from their neighbourhoods that the attempted genocide of the Second World War was able to be carried out. The final lines are:
'Then they came for the jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.'
Councillor Sarah Frances Bevan (Peasedown St John, Liberal Democrat)
Vice Chairman, Bath and North East Somerset Council
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