Sir, - Anthony O'Brien of the Tibet Support Group (April 15th) rails and hits out in all directions against China for its violation of human rights. I'm always sceptical of support groups championing the causes of oppressed people around the globe from the comfort and security of their home ground, using insufficient data. We can extend the limits of our own and other people's freedom only if we know what obstacles stand in the way.
The claim that the Chinese Communist Government is directly responsible for more deaths than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined, is wildly over the top. In my two years in China, with its 1.3 billion people to feed, I never spoke to a Chinese student who disagreed with the "loathed" one-child policy. Consider 22 per cent of the world population with only 7 per cent of the world's cultivable land. What did we do with our surplus population up to a decade ago? I deplore the use of the moral engine by Mr O'Brien linking the one-child with the "virtual guarantee of abortion and infanticide".
Far better allow a people to change their system of government and choose the manner of running their affairs from inside in accordance with their own political and social ethos. A prosperous China is in the best interest of world peace, mindful that central to their policy is that economic progress precedes political reform. What happened in Bosnia and in post-Soviet Russia with its wars, bankruptcy and poverty is the last thing that China, a growing world power and a friendly people, wants. - Yours, etc., John F. Fallon,
Boyle, Co Roscommon.