Sir, - The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, when speaking publicly on the horror encountered at Wexford Business Park last Saturday, implied that proposed carriers' liability legislation could offer assistance in such circumstances (The Irish Times, December 10th).
This is a remarkable piece of disinformation since this law will inevitably lead to greater numbers of asylum-seekers resorting to smugglers or other hazardous means of entering our territory. Airline and ferry staff will, by virtue of this law, necessarily become unauthorised immigration officials. Many more people, denied passage on airlines and ferries, will be driven to unsafe and unregulated transport.
Where the inevitable consequence of a law is to force people into the hands of smugglers and into airtight containers, such legislation cannot be tolerated. If the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Bill is introduced, more victims, rather than fewer, will almost certainly be the result. To suggest otherwise is deeply cynical. These deaths are a wake-up call for the Irish public: we must not forget that we share a moral responsibility for the actions of our government.
No laws will stop desperate people fleeing desperate circumstances. The basic human instinct is for survival, and no mother or father will be dissuaded from striving for a better life for their children. It is about time that Ireland and other EU countries faced up to this fact. To talk, instead, of enhanced powers of arrest and extradition of those responsible shifts attention from the reality - that this tightening of Fortress Europe itself breeds smuggling.
More sadly, though, it denies the victims caught in the middle of this cat-and-mouse game between criminals and governments the recognition that their plight deserves. It was notable that the Minister focused on the punishment of the smugglers involved instead of on real ways to ensure that this will never happen again. - Yours, etc.,
Sean Love, Director, Amnesty International, Irish Section, Fleet Street, Dublin 2.