Sir, — Gay Mitchell (Letters, November 13th) writes that "the passing of FW de Klerk gives us a timely reminder that a form of apartheid continues in this country".
Mr Mitchell may consider that an analogy between the contentious association of de Klerk with the horrors of racial apartheid and the politically vexatious question of university representation in Seanad Éireann is valid.
For others it presents as an opportunistic and deeply disturbing comparison.
– Yours, etc,
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JOHANNA LOWRY O’REILLY,
Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
Sir , – The current Seanad university franchise system is discriminatory, it may even amount to an unconstitutional invidious discrimination. A case on this issue is currently a matter before the courts.
However, Gay Mitchell's bluster of comparing it to apartheid and using the death of FW de Klerk to shoehorn it on to this page is an embarrassment (Letters, November 13th).
The crime of apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
A cursory search of the Oireachtas record online indicates that Mitchell, during his time there, and other currently serving Oireachtas members have thrown the word about with wild abandon.
If they are capable of understanding the import of the term, I would like to ask them to stop. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN DINEEN
Clontarf, Dublin 3.