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Ståle Eskeland – a memory word

Steel Eskeland is dead. Who would dare to ask the most difficult questions now?




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Steel Eskeland is dead (25.08.1943 – 26.12.2015). For those of us who did not know him deeply as a person, but as an always welcome voice in the media when something important was going on, like a friendly bowler or someone you could call and get advice from – it has also become empty. Steel Eskeland is dead. Who would dare to ask the most difficult questions now? The questions that so many fear and flee from. Who wants to take up the legacy of digging out the heaviest cases, placing them in our crucial legal space, and at the same time making it understandable to us in the media and in conversations? Who, like him, can balance the justice-driven and hell-devastated mind – which must have been behind the many reoccupation requests, digging and confrontations he engaged in throughout his life – with the factual, informative and always friendly and constructive form that was his? Who today has his ability to dare to put together the small pieces of the heavy, serious arguments? Dare to also direct them to power when it has a face and a name? – Who did not fear leaders, money power or career loss. Legal protection We all depend on is not natural. It is fought every day and is maintained every minute by community watchers who too often have to endure criticism where they should have been praised. Steel was such a never-resting guard. What it cost him to always choose to fight knows only those closest, such as marking the hours, vacations, nights spent. Which marked the energy that disappeared after the defeat of force majeure. But who surely knew about the joy and gratitude with which he met so much.

When his arguments were so waterproof and the evidence so irrefutable, then the silence was chosen to stop him.

For most, it will be the major lawsuits he engaged in that remain after Ståle Eskeland: Torgersen case og Teng case reigns high. Where the power and judicial apparatus rides in prestige over victims and justice considerations. But for the rest of us, it is when he is passed over in silence that he rises the highest. When his arguments were so watertight and the evidence so irrefutable, then the silence was chosen to stop him. This is how it was when he held our own Storting politicians and responsible authorities responsible based on the Nuremberg judgments. Their role in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. The wars of aggression that we – now – have allowed ourselves to be seduced into were far more than unwise politics and counter-active militarism. Ståle showed us that it was among the most serious crimes. He dared to put named Norwegian contemporary politicians on the dock together with Göring and Hess because they had all chosen war of aggression and aggression, what created all the other evils – evils that we have fully experienced in recent years. Even the victors who write history must stand trial for the truth one day. Ståle did not do it to avenge or punish, but to secure the next generation a future without new abuses committed blindly and in failed loyalty. As a professor, author and debater, Ståle Eskeland left behind textbooks and scientific articles, and quotes as a rich source material for students, researchers and truth seekers in the decades to come. Therefore, one can, with greater right than in most words of remembrance, say that Ståle Eskeland will live on: After his pen has now been put down, we will at any time be able to hear his voice: Always meaningful. Always about what is important. Persuasive, compelling, reassuring about the unstoppable justice. There will be new Ståle Eskelands, but it seems so long. And right now it seems very, very empty after him. Harold Pinter quoted Paulo Neruda in his Nobel speech 10 years ago. Like Pinter, Ståle also used his last efforts for what he believed in. Pinters and Neruda's battle was Ståle's battle, a battle that does not know times, boundaries, forms or cultures and which can therefore stand as a word after Ståle Eskeland:

And you will ask: why does his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets.

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