Madam, - Colm O'Cuanacháin, Secretary General of Amnesty International, takes issue with Kevin Myers for criticising Amnesty's campaign on violence against women (April 29th). But, instead of dealing with the valid criticisms by Kevin Myers, he trots out the usual propaganda, ignoring the well established fact that women are just as likely as men to engage in domestic violence.
In this regard he reiterates the spurious claim that one in five women "who have been involved in intimate relationships with men have suffered serious violence at the hand of a partner or former partner". Does he really believe that one in five women are seriously abused by their partners? If so, he must accept the corollary that one in five men seriously abuse their wives/partners. This would imply that approximately 1,700 of Amnesty International's 17,000 Irish Section members (source: IPA Yearbook) violently beat their wives (assuming 50 per cent are male) - unless the members of Amnesty would claim to be more virtuous than the rest of humanity.
Like Mr O'Cuanacháin's letter, the literature disseminated as part of the Amnesty campaign deals with the issue of violence as if women were its only victims, when, in fact, more men suffer and die from violence than women. By concentrating its campaign exclusively on "violence against women" Amnesty International is implying that violence against men is less serious than violence against women.
It is ironic that "equality" features prominently in Amnesty's literature. Obviously its myopic concept of equality does not include men. Would Amnesty conduct a campaign against the torture of prisoners which specifically excluded women prisoners simply because it could produce statistics which show that more men are imprisoned than women? - Yours, etc.,
MARY T. CLEARY, National Co-ordinator, Amen, Navan, Co Meath.