And here is another comment about this subject.
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I invite anyone who has words of support for Natalee Holloway and her family to add them here to this article I obtained, below. Please refrain from derrogatory, hurtful or sarcastic comments that only hurt Natalee's family, as this is intended as a simple act of kindness, and a means of giving comfort and support to Natalee's family during this very painful time for all of them.
Thank you, in advance for your kindness and respect to this simiple request for this beautiful family that has been thrown into the depths of suffering that most of us will never know, or even be able to imagine.
[initially from:
http://www.hope-for-natalee.blogspot.comHOLOCAUST MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC:
"Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."
Throughout history, the lessons of hatred and evil inflicting suffering upon the innocent, have taught us that inaction in the presence of human degredation is indeed a crime against humanity.
One has only to look at the suffering and injustices inflicted upon innocent souls through out the world’s history to understand that becoming a bystander in the face of human suffering is not only a cowardly act, but an unconscionable one as well.
But what should our response be when the suffering we see and the injustices committed have been directed to one individual? Should one human life be worth our moral outrage, our conscionable objection, our unity of voices in response to the pain and suffering of one person?
Should the life of one child, snuffed out at the beginning of a turning point towards her young adult life, matter at all to any of us?
Why does Natalee Holloway matter?
Why should we unite in a spirit of nationalism in an outcry for the crimes committed against her humanity, when she is perceived by some as “just another missing person”?
Why should we unite in a spirit of moral outrage and social conscience in the presence of her battered story of torment and torture, and degradation?
Who is Natalee Holloway’s keeper when her human rights have been stripped from her?
Who is Natalee Holloway’s keeper when her basic civil rights have been denied to her?
Who is Natalee Holloway’s keeper when her voice and her freedom have been robbed from her?
Who is Natalee Holloway’s keeper when in the words of our president, who called upon all of us to “Honor this place where valor sleeps…”, - we cannot accomplish this final tribute to Natalee's life because we cannot even locate where she is?
Who is the keeper of the valor and honor of Natalee Holloway, an innocent victim who longs to come home and be returned to the loving care of her family?
Should the fight for freedom and justice be relegated to the private level, when a society acts together to divest a child of her basic human rights?
Should the fight for freedom and truth be relegated to the private level, when a group of criminals unite in their power to prevent justice and freedom from being served to one innocent child who committed no crime, who hurt no human being, whose legacy was one of honor and kindness?
What can the fight for freedom mean in any realm – whether it be in the foxholes of war, or on the thresholds of any injustice, if we trivialize our moral obligation to stand up for that freedom by creating equations and numbers as a means of suggesting that one person’s freedom is not equal to the freedoms of many?
How can we proclaim to be able to stand up for the freedoms of many, if we are incapable of standing together against the crimes of injustice committed against one innocent brutally victimized child? Can we truly say that the battle for freedom for the many, is justified, but the cries for freedom coming from one innocent child is not worthy of any response from our collective voices?
Can we not muster up the courage to cry out for justice and truth – for one innocent child who was tormented to death, and robbed of simple human respect in that she continues to have no right to having her remains returned to her family?
What kind of society have we become if we claim to be ‘too busy’ to be capable of defending one innocent child whose final moments on this earth placed her in the presence of the darkest corners of hell?
Whose battle shall this be – to defend the honor of Natalee Holloway, and uphold her right to be free – even if that freedom is limited to the boundaries of death inflicted upon her? Whose battle shall this be to uphold Natalee Holloway’s right that her body be returned to her family, and she be accorded the simple human decent act of allowing her body to buried in a place to honor her valor and her great honor and kindess to others?
BE NOT A BYSTANDER! For if you choose silence in the face of such inhumanity to an innocent child, then you have no valor or courage to defend the greater masses whose cry for freedom is not any different than Natalee’s.
BE NOT A BYSTANDER! For if you cannot muster the energy nor the moral responsibility to defend the rights of even – “just one child”, then how can you claim to have any conscience? Justice is found in the conscience of society in how it chooses to respond to the cries of the most vulnerable for their freedom. What could be more vulnerable than the plight of one child, condemned to exile by those who took her life, her liberty, her freedom away from her? What could be more vulnerable, than a child who is imprisoned against her will, and left in an eternity of being deprived of ever seeing her homeland again?
Whose battle is this – to defend the liberty and freedom of Natalee Holloway?
As we celebrate the founding of this great nation, and honor the men and women who fight for freedom in every realm where the battle for freedom takes place, let us remember that those who take up the battle in crying out for Natalee’s right to justice and truth, are the true heroes who shatter the cowardice of indifference by becoming the sacred light of truth that honors Natalee’s right to come home and to be finally free.
Perhaps Frederick Douglass captured it best:
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”
There is no “indifference” to the motion of the waves, for in the end they find a direction to take.
There is no “indifference” to the agitation needed in plowing the earth to bear something fruitful, for the toil of labor brings forth the yield of something life-giving.
There is no “indifference” to the glorious resounding cries of thunder, for it heralds the brilliance of light that exposes the darkest corners of corruption, and the insidious chains of injustice and deceit.
There can be no indifference on our part to the cries of Natalee Holloway for her freedom.
For in the words of Edward R. Murrow, “We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
Natalee is one of our own. She wanted to come home and begin a bright future filled with her hopes and dreams.
Surely as Americans, we can join together in rallying our voices for the right to Justice and Truth for Natalee Holloway, and for her right to finally come home.
