Madam, - The most chilling aspects of the genocide in Darfur are the historical parallels with the Rwandan holocaust almost 12 years ago. That slaughter led ultimately to a regional war in the Congo, which drew in more than a dozen countries and rebel groups and cost of the lives of more than 3 million people, mostly through starvation and disease.
As the killing in Darfur spills over the border into Chad, and the world continues to look the other way, we are about to witness history repeating itself. A whole generation in central Africa is put at risk unless we can find some way of getting our own Government and political leaders to act - for the major powers appear frozen in their inertia despite the politically correct rhetoric from the US and the EU.
Already more than 400,000 innocent children, women and men are dead and the pace of the killing has picked up as the Sudanese regime makes it more difficult for humanitarian aid to get through. We all know how the regime of General Omar el-Bashir in Khartoum, already accused of crimes against humanity, uses its Janjaweed militia, in concert with its armed forced, to attack villages, rape and murder indiscriminately, and then seek to impede aid getting through to the camps where the innocent seek protection. However, far from being places of sanctuary, these camps have proved insecure with women and girls raped when they leave in search of firewood and men who venture out often murdered. There have also reportedly been attacks on some of these camps.
Our Government and the leaders of all political parties know about what is going on there, yet they implicate all of us in the genocide by doing nothing about it. Or are they waiting to be moved in five or 10 years' time by the books and movies on Darfur and Central Africa after another record number of innocent lives will have been consumed in a wholly preventable conflict? - Yours, etc,
RONAN TYNAN, Blackrock, Co Dublin.