Northern negotiations - Intolerance must not triumph

Yesterday’s commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland was a timely reminder of the evil that can emerge if sectarianism and religious bigotry is allowed to go unchecked. A total of one million Jewish people perished in the camp from 1942 until its liberation in 1945.

Around 125,000 other people also perished at Auschwitz. Those victims included up to 75,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma people, 15,000 Soviet prisoners and up to a similar number of freedom fighters from various areas of Europe.

If the Nazis had won the war and wiped out all of the Jewish people in Europe, they would in all likelihood have continued with their persecution of others that they despised. The world should not be allowed to forget the horrors of Auschwitz, doing so would be a virtual invitation for something similar to happen again.

Of course, something comparable has already happened again in the Darfur area of Sudan during the past decade, in Rwanda in 1994, and in Cambodia during the late 1970s. Some 200,000 people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, and up to 2.2 million are estimated to have died in that country during the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge.

Outrages on a smaller scale occurred in the Balkans following the break up of Yugoslavia, in Iraq against the Kurds during the reign of Saddam Hussein, or at My Lai in Vietnam. The mentality behind such outrages was not confined to the Nazis; it is one of the darker sides of human nature.

This is something of which we should be acutely aware because a comparatively small number of demented people can cause enormous grief and damage, especially in the nuclear age. To think it could only happen elsewhere is to engage in the kind of prejudiced thinking on which intolerance is nurtured.

The religious intolerance in Northern Ireland among those professing Christianity is like a throwback to past centuries. Yesterday two Northern political commentators were suggesting that it would suit the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin to force an election at this time. On the one hand, the DUP could insure that more extreme loyalists would be unlikely to upstage it. Sinn Féin, on the other hand, would be able to assert that it had stood up to the DUP.

While one cannot compare the scale of Auschwitz with anything that happened in Northern Ireland, it should be a grim warning to the talks participants of the awful outcomes that can emerge if sectarian intolerance and religious bigotry goes unchecked.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown should be commended for their efforts to broker an agreement. They have not been successful, but they have agreed on a “pathway” to deal with the problems. It is incumbent on all those involved in the talks to take that “pathway”. It is undoubtedly the road the majority in the north wish to travel.