Dear Friends

While I have shared the little I can about myself with you already, I hope, as our conversations develop and deepen with time, that it is my convictions that you come to know and measure me by. There is much I have missed during my years frozen, and I am swiftly adapting to a world in which a man, with a jib like the cut of mine, no longer naturally finds his place. Remember, counting the years in el refrigerador, I am now circa 112 years old.

 

But I know my purpose. It is manifested in this blog.

 

I find it poetic that I was defrosted to bang together the Council’s user’s manual. Our destinies, if you like – that is, the Council and myself – are intertwined. As the Council is the new incarnation of the Commission that I helped establish, having had six decades to reflect, I too feel renewed, restored – save for a gimpy hip (the product of a mistimed parachute landing in the then-Dutch East Indies) and a bloated liver (the product of too many bloody fishing trips with Ernie).

 

Yet I digress my friends. I apologise. After sixty years in the cooler I am still regathering myself. Gandhiji always used to say to me “you take the long way around a point, Samji”. Alas, I still do. But I hope there are many points that we tackle together, comrades, as we together invest ourselves in the Council and its good work. Let it be our mantra, our mission, to never swerve from the hard, critical issues – to turn a sharp, critical eye to the ridiculousness and absurdity that so often envelops and inhibits our collective efforts to defend and advance human rights – and to at all times preserve international human rights law as our touchstone.

 

SS.