Madam, - Your edition of January 5th carried a report from your correspondent in Islamabad, Declan Walsh, of the brutal beheading in Afghanistan of a school principal, Mr Malim Abdul Habib, in the presence of his family.
This man's "crime", in the eyes of Taliban militants, was that he acted as principal of a co-educational secondary school which was deemed "guilty" of providing education for girls.
In the previous month another teacher was shot dead after he ignored orders to stop teaching girls.
I hope that the Minister for Education and Science, on behalf of our Government, will register the strongest possible protest at these appalling crimes, if she has not already done so. Is it expecting too much that our teachers' unions might organise a demonstration - on a Saturday - expressing their abhorrence of these events, and their solidarity with their heroic colleagues in Afghanistan?
It seems to me that such concerns are at least as worthy of expression as those regarding the Irish Ferries workers. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK E O'KEEFFE, Derrygarron, Portlaoise, Co Laois.