Editorial Silence over Nelson

For a moment, imagine the scene in New York or any other U.S. city. Allegations surface that in the course of her work, a respected and prominent attorney has been physically threatened by some police officers. Indeed, the allegations have gone beyond the suggestion of mere threats. The attorney herself is publicly stating that she has been physically assaulted and that, in fact, her life has been threatened by officers whose primary duty is to uphold the law while protecting life.

For a moment, imagine the absence of any investigation into these allegations.

The fact is, you probably can’t.

The outcome of such a scenario in the U.S. would be, at the very least, an investigation by the district attorney’s office, perhaps a special investigator appointed by the mayor’s office, perhaps even a probe by the federal authorities. In all likelihood, there would be an internal police department investigation, too. The press would be all over this the story like a wet blanket. The attorney at the center of the storm would be on TV. Local politicians and members of Congress would be outraged. Editorial writers would be expending buckets of ink underlining the vital importance, indeed the very sacred nature, of a justice system free from threat and coercion.

And then, the attorney is suddenly dead, blown to pieces in a car bomb. Imagine the primary enforcers of the rule of law turning away, saying that there is no justification or point in investigating those police officers allegedly behind the threats to the attorney’s life.

Again, you probably can’t imagine such a silence, void, vacuum. You can’t imagine it because, in truth, the sky would fall and the ground would shake in the aftermath of such a shocking crime.

Perhaps, then, it was Rosemary Nelson’s even greater misfortune that she died in a place where outrage is ignored with such apparent ease by guardians of the law, indeed where the rule of law itself can be pushed aside, as if a mere tiresome and time-consuming inconvenience.