The Crime Of the Era

"In our era, an injustice done to a single individual is a crime committed against the whole society and against all humanity.

…Some people accept silence as a way of life. Their silence is their freedom and weapons. Every injustice draws strength from their inaction. Those who have blood on their hands, those who live with the tombstones within them, are all partners in the same injustice and the same crime. If your eyes are open, you will see! If your are not deaf, you will hear! If your hands are not cut off, you will reach out!...”

(Yeni Ortam, January 20, 1975, The Crime of the Era)

“….We have become accustomed to corruption, burying young men in bloody shrouds. We have become accustomed to torture houses… We have become accustomed to those condemned to unemployment. We have become accustomed to those whose doors are being showered with bullets.

….A society that easily forgets past crimes becomes complicit in the responsibility for the blood shed of the future.”

(Cumhuriyet, June 27, 1975, Taking İt For Granted...)

Uğur MUMCU

Writings between January 1, 1975, and June 17, 1975. There is one of the Nationalist Front governments in power. Demirel, Erbakan, Türkeş, Feyzioğlu... Corruption, favouritism, intense external dependence, terrorism, irredeemable hostility towards the left, primitive, irrational, reactionary right-wing politics based on religious exploitation, and against all of these, a chilling insensitivity, acceptance, and indifference... so, the crime of the era.