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When a person is directed to act in a manner antithetical with their core character or values or whatever you want to call it...they know the act, order, or behavior is wrong....
This is where the rubber meets the road. You don't know what or who you are until it's tested and this is when it's tested. If a person caves, for whatever reason, they can no longer claim clean hands/clean character, either privately within themselves or publicly.
They have made themselves culpable, complicit in the crime, up to and including the simple act of knowingly processing documentation of it. The thousands of people who did not speak out, walk out, or otherwise expose these crimes; at whatever cost to their position, can never again claim morality and look at themselves in a mirror with a clear conscience.
That person may be ostracized, demonized, ridiculed, or worse at the point of "standing up", but they know they are right and anything suffered in the short term will be made right in the long term.
THAT is "character", THAT is what a human being, hopefully, strives for. Period.