“Ireland that has wronged no man, that has injured no land, that has sought no dominion over others. Ireland is treated today among other nations of the world as if she was a convicted criminal. If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel and shall cling to my rebellion with the last drop of my blood.”
“If there be no right of rebellion against a state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then I am sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this.”
Sir Roger Casement
“After his death Casement became one of the best-remembered of the 1916 sixteen, perhaps because two controversies kept his memory alive: the campaign for his body to be returned to Ireland and the ‘Black Diaries. His connections with Ulster also raised his profile during the anti-partition campaign of the late 1940s/early ‘50s. In 1953 the GAA named its stadium in Belfast, Casement Park. Casement’s body was returned to Ireland in 1965 – a goodwill gesture by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson – on condition that he was buried in Dublin, and not at Murlough Bay in Antrim as he had wished. President Eamon de Valera, who had named a son (Ruairí) after him, marched proudly to Glasnevin Cemetery despite the freezing weather. But it was only in recent years that Casement’s career as a humanitarian has been fully acknowledged in Ireland and the two strands of his remarkable career have been integrated. ”
Mary E. Daly — Emeritus Professor of History at UCD and President of the Royal Irish Academy
Roger Casement attempted to smuggle weapons from Germany for the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week of April 1916.
Sir Roger David Casement (1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916) was an Irish nationalist who worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat and later became a humanitarian activist, poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations”, he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru. In April 1916, Roger Casement attempted to smuggle weapons from Germany for the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week. He was arrested, convicted and executed for high treason. But sometimes, even a death sentence can be ridiculously hilarious. Roger Casement himself wrote that he was to be “hanged on a comma”, leading to the well-used epigram. Follow us on twitter: @Intel_Today Continue reading
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