"If we don't say it's wrong, then that says it's right"

That's a line from a song the late, great Solomon Burke used to sing. I was thinking about it while reading the reaction to the news that the Nobel Peace Prize had been given to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. It was a marvelous decision because here's a man who has fought to bring the 1.3 billion people of China the democratic freedoms and rights denied to them by the ruling regime. As a result, Liu is serving an 11-year prison sentence for "subversion". This is wrong, and we need to keep saying that it's wrong until Liu Xiaobo is free.

In "None Of Us Are Free", Solomon Burke, who died on Sunday morning, sings: "There are people in the darkness / And they just can't see the light / And if we don't say it's wrong, then that says it's right."