Dear Sirs

My condolences to all those people who have lost loved ones in the Madrid bombing on the 11th March 2004. However, in the hope of not sounding callous or insensitive, I wish to question the apparent exclusivity that certain countries have in commemorating a dramatic loss of life in such a public and international fashion, when there are similar and more disturbing atrocities being committed to other peoples and cultures. I look through the shop window of current events and see that the people of Sierra Leone are being showered with similar persecution, and yet their experience has not been treated in the same manner. Why this disparity? Why this inequality in grief?

Is it because countries like Spain and The United States are major pillars in the 'axis of good', or is it a conscious attempt by the international community to further coagulate the cultural imperialism and racial divides symptomatic of the repercussions of colonialism? Whatever the reason, I believe that it is unfair, almost to the point of being vulgar, that there seems to be a blatant absence of any display of intimate sympathy for the loss of life in other regions of the world. Is the loss of life to be qualified; is the loss of life in Sierra Leone drastically different from the loss of life in Spain?

The railway bombing in Spain cost the lives of 190 people with over 1500 being injured, in response to this, two million people bought the centre of Madrid to a standstill to demonstrate their anger, despair and grief.

In contrast, in Sierra Leone during an 11 year war, which shows no signs of abating, and has left 50,000 people dead, 500, 000 homeless and 10,000 mutilated, there has not been a single tear dropped, nor one candle lit, no ‘signs of grief’ displayed, no international recognition nor regional solidarity, compared with the concerted and concentrated parade in Spain. The psychological scars and emotional dislocation that the Spanish people are experiencing at present, is multiplied thousands times over in the case of the people of Sierra Leone. The horrific mutilations that people have suffered, and are still suffering, where arms and legs have been hacked off, lips severed and vaginas sewn together with fishing lines, should stir within the international community at least one tear, one candle, one symbol of grief. The intensity and extent of grief in the Spanish case is, in my opinion, bordering on hypocrisy and inhumanity, in the face of the ongoing atrocities in West Africa.

I am not a mathematically inclined person, but if the death of 200 people can compel 2 million to grieve, how much should 50,000 compel? There has not been a mass demonstration or international display of grief for the atrocities committed in this West African country, yet for 200 people a massive international and domestic explosion of grief and sympathy has taken place. Are not the people of Sierra Leone humans as well? Are they not part of the international community crying out for support, for assistance to end this suffering, to end this act of terror?

Please note that I am not from West Africa, nor am I an advocate for violence and terrorism, nor do I not sympathise with the Spanish experience.

What I am is a human being who considers that a loss of life is a loss of life and that support, assistance and solidarity should be showered regardless of the racial composition, region, or geopolitical importance of the country in which these acts have been committed. I am a person who is disturbed by the absence of parity and justice that is being blatantly disguised in the panic induced reactions and selectiveness associated with ‘the war on terror’; I am person who is concerned over the undernourished conception of international morality and the consciously constructed theory that promotes subjective domestic concerns at the expense of objective international principles.

The UN and the international community would continue to fail to provide neither an accurate description nor a useful prescription for how to identify, curb and eventually eradicate international and domestic terrorism, if it continues to be dictated by the policies emanating from the sterile and impotent intellectual environment pervading in the White House. The UN and its international agencies have consciously discarded and abandoned the people of West Africa, in their time of need, due to the UN promoting its programme of selective altruism in the hope of protecting long term international organisational recognition.

During the fight against terrorism the UN has been exposed as weak and has had no choice but to give the perception that is coping with the dynamism of this phenomenon. In reality it has not been able to develop a coherent and consistent policy based on analysis that is free from the myth and prejudices of the past or of the debilitating influence of Washington. The result of this endemic inefficiency and ineffectiveness is a meagre and fickle supply of international aid and military assistance to areas which cry out for a more concerted and committed effort to be applied, similar to the impending reaction, soon to be adopted in the aftermath of the Spanish experience. The dualism and hypocrisy shown in the West African and Spanish experience is proof of the deepening moral bankruptcy within the UN and the international community and their inability to unloosen this knot of inaction that has paralysed their efforts and obscured their objectives.

In the end the Spanish people would grieve for their dead, the international community would mobilise their resources and actively pursue the perpetrators of this heinous and cowardly crime, thus lubricating the ‘ war on terrorism’ and the bright light of justice and peace would be lit. And the people of West Africa? Well they would continue to live in a haze of uncertainty under the darkness of the moral failure and duplicitous actions of the international community, and slowly succumb to the epidemic of pessimism and neglect that they have been contaminated with, no hope of being bathed in the glorious glow of justice and peace.

This begs the question, are your tears and sympathies for the loss of human life in particular or the demise of humanity in general?