Mafia code of honour requiring silence about criminal activities.
Out of this feeling grew the "Omerta," which paralyzes the arm of justice both in Naples and Sicily. The late Marion Crawford thus summed up the Sicilian code of honor:
According to this code, a man who appeals to the law against his fellow man is not only a fool but a coward, and he who cannot take care of himself without the protection of the police is both .... It is reckoned as cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though the offence be against one's
self, as it would be not to avenge an injury by violence. It is regarded as dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A rhymed Sicilian proverb sums up this principle, the supposed speaker being one who has been stabbed. "If I live, I will kill thee," it says; "if I die, I forgive thee!"
While it shocked many when Hodler broke Olympic omerta in 1998 to expose the corruption permeating the selection of Olympic host cities, it did not surprise many who knew him.
Michael Carson, The Guardian, 23 October 2006. Guardian
Footballers generally operate a law of omerta on such matters, and Zidane is a reluctant talker at the best of times, so we may never be really sure what Materazzi did or said that provoked him into one of the acts of retaliatory violence that have studded his otherwise brilliant passage through the game.
Richard Williams, The Guardian, 10 July 2006. Guardian
Yet another tax credit question, yet again the Chancellor takes the vow of omerta instead of responding in person.
"The sympathies of a well-adjusted person can easily be aroused by the plight of strangers. Indeed, the skillful writer of a novel, a play, or an opera can engage our emotions on behalf of people who are not only strangers to us, but who do not even exist! And a person whose emotions cannot be so aroused is not behaving normally" - John Derbyshire