Torn apart by war and no one notices

CONGRATULATIONS to Stephen King (Opinion, August 23) for a very moving and informative account of his visit to Cambodia.

It is right that we should be reminded of the capacity for inhumanity that man possesses, and the victims of its most extreme manifestations, such as those in Cambodia and Congo.

GOAL was heavily involved in delivering aid to the peoples of Cambodia and Congo and we witnessed at first hand the misery of the people who had survived.

I was one of the first Westerners to visit Cambodia after it had been “liberated” by the Vietnamese, when we delivered a planeload of supplies in October 1979. I wondered at the time how the world could have allowed such genocide to take place, and why no one showed any enthusiasm for pursuing the perpetrators.

In the Congo, seven nations plundered the country, leaving nearly five million people dead, while the international community looked on. As Mr King points out, the Congo is still being torn apart, and hardly anyone notices.

A few years after Cambodia, when I had more experience of both mankind’s capacity for brutality, and the international community’s tendency to look away, I stopped wondering.

John O’Shea

GOAL

PO BOX 19

Dun Laoghaire

Co Dublin