Sir, - Over the years I have taken part in many demonstrations in Dublin. Up until Thursday's demonstration against the NATO bombing I have never pulled out half way through in disgust. Normally on demonstrations some people see fit to shout incoherent abuse from the sidelines, this time however, it was neither abuse nor incoherent.
Many people on the pavement in taxis and buses shouted at us: "What about the Kosovars? What about the genocide?" They were right; the organisers of the march, through their banners and placards, showed that they had nothing to say about such issues. In fact, the organisers had no problem with people waving Chetnik flags in the demonstration, the flag of the ethnic cleansers.
I pulled out of the march in disgust but accompanied it to hear what the speakers had to say. They said little about the genocide. They equated the victims with the aggressors. To them the Kosovars had no right to defend themselves on the spurious grounds that in order to defend themselves they would have to buy arms and the speakers were quite rightly not in favour of the arms industry.
Any group which is been wiped out by a genocidal army has the right to defend itself. These same people would have told the Jews who rose up against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto to stop, that they were also aggressors and should desist from such violence lest they unwittingly give support to the arms industry. The reality is that the organisers of the march unwittingly gave support to Milosevic and his campaign of genocide.
Any opposition to NATO intervention must be based on respect for the people of the Balkans and the right to self defence. NATO is not going to support the Kosovars it wants Kosovo to remain under Serb rule. NATO, like the speakers at the march, is opposed to the Kosovars defending themselves. I don't intend going on any more of the demonstrations organised by these people, not because I am in favour of NATO intervention, which I am not, but because I believe that any anti-war campaign should be clearly and actively opposed to genocide and on the side of the victims, which, alas, is not the case. -Yours, etc., Gearoid O Loingsigh,
Mountjoy Square, Dublin 1.