Sir, - Aine Ni Chonaill (September 10th) says that a person has no absolute right to be granted asylum. She makes much of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's assertion that the "person for whom asylum is established ... has no legal right to demand it, while the sheltering state, which has the legal right to grant asylum, is under no obligation to give it". What she does not explain is that this must be understood in its historical context.
In the past, people had the right to claim asylum in certain locations. Under Constantine the Great, for example, all Christian churches were made asylums from arrest and officers of justice. People entering a church had the right to claim asylum, whether or not the owners of the church felt they had a just case. In the modern world there is no such right to claim asylum irrespective of one's acts. This is all the quoted segment from the Encyclopaedia Britannica means. It does not, as Aine Ni Chonaill seems to suggest, relieve us of our obligations to other humans on the basis of our shared humanity.
A state grants an applicant asylum in order to protect the person's human rights. These are rights people have because they are members of the human family. These rights are not granted to people by any state or an international body. A state or a person can deny these rights but they cannot take them away. They are inalienable. Our commitment to give asylum to people derives from this fact.
The converse is also true. A refusal to give asylum to people whose human rights are being abused is a denial of the nature of human rights. It says some people are less human than others. Any one with a knowledge of history knows where that particular line of reasoning goes. -Yours, etc., Roland Tormey,
Avondale Court, Corbally, Limerick.