Party leaders’ selective condemnation of terror

LABOUR party leader Eamon Gilmore played the anti-terrorism card in his party leader’s address to the Labour conference last Saturday.

He expressed sympathy with the victims of the Mumbai attacks in which almost 200 people were killed. There is nothing wrong with that in itself, but his remarks came immediately after his attempt to bring the Labour party back in line with his support for the Lisbon Treaty.

What is wrong is that Gilmore and many other politicians consistently ignore far greater examples of terrorism that happen to be state terrorism. Why is it that 200 people in India, or 3,000 people in the USA, appear to be more important than one million people killed in Iraq due to state terrorism by the US and its allies, or 200,000 people killed in the Darfur genocide by the Sudanese government and its allies?