Sir, – International organisations such as the UN, EU and Red Cross are mandated to promote and defend essential values such as democracy, freedom, human rights, equality, international peace and justice. A recently published book by Irish journalist Sally Hayden called My Fourth Time, We Drowned exposes the failure of these organisations to uphold such vital ideals and obligations.
Questionable western economic interests are being pursued at the expense of gross human rights violations and abuses of international laws and humanitarian obligations. Tens of thousands of refugees and economic migrants have died while attempting to flee from conflicts and dire poverty in the Middle East and Africa. Several of these conflicts have been precipitated by US and Nato wars of aggression and the overthrow of governments. Initially Ireland and other EU states provided their naval services to rescue thousands of drowning migrants from the Mediterranean. This humanitarian rescue response was abandoned and replaced by more aggressive EU pushback policies backed up by Frontex EU border control mechanisms and financial deals with the Turkish government. EU naval forces are now preventing rescue operations in the Mediterranean and funding the Libyan coastguard to prevent migrants escaping to Europe and forcing them back to dreadful concentration camps in Libya where murder, rape, human trafficking and slavery are being perpetrated.
What has been happening in Libya, the Mediterranean, and in the wider Middle East and north Africa is comparable with what happened in Cambodia and Rwanda, as was exposed by a few brave journalists like Fergal Keane. Western nations and international organisations said never again, and once again they never really meant it. Will the truths exposed by Sally Hayden also be ignored again? – Yours, etc,
EDWARD HORGAN,
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Castletroy,
Limerick.