A chara, – Your editorial "Sinn Féin and abuse – shirking responsibility" (March 14th) left the reader in no doubt as to where your newspaper stands when it comes to the Sinn Féin party. Not for the first time, alongside many in the mainstream media, you once again appoint yourself as judge and jury on Sinn Féin and its members.
Your editorial castigates Sinn Féin with little more than bitter rhetoric. You make dogmatic statements of opinion and present them to the reader as fact. You refer to Sinn Féin with its “closely-knit organisation and intelligence system”; you state that the party “marches to a different drum from other political parties. The rigidity of the tempo and the discipline demanded sets it apart”. You write “any questioning of partial presentations is dismissed as being politically motivated” while you also confusingly state that “one hundred cases of child sexual abuse may have been investigated within the republican movement. But details of those inquiries are being withheld”. Note your own wording where cases “may” have been investigated but details “are” being withheld. In reality you do not know but are happy to accept hearsay as fact. Why?
Your newspaper, alongside others in the mainstream media, is not interested in listening to what Sinn Féin says. Where is your editorial’s reference to Martin McGuinness having had to write three times to the Taoiseach seeking some manner of cross-Border mechanism to resolve outstanding issues relating to victims of abuse? Where is your editorial’s reference to Sinn Féin repeatedly asking anybody with any evidence to go to the Garda or PSNI or social services? Why have you and others accepted the word of vitriolic, bitter opponents of Sinn Féin concerning lists of abusers and republican investigations, without a single shred of evidence – and yet at the same time you do not call on that evidence, if it exists, to be handed over to the appropriate authorities? – Is mise,
EF FANNING,
Dublin 14.
A chara, – The report They Shoot Children, Don't They? indicates that more than 500 children were shot or mutilated by republican and loyalist vigilantes since 1990. It is clear that former members of the IRA and current members of Sinn Féin, as well as their loyalist counterparts, have been responsible for appalling levels of violence against children, and not only in the North. – Is mise,
Dr IRENE BOADA,
Belfast.