The Government should have the moral courage to use the remainder of its term of the EU presidency to highlight the mass murder and destruction taking place in the Congo, the founder of GOAL, Mr John O'Shea, said last night.
Mr O'Shea was addressing the Peace Forum at the 21st annual Tipperary International Festival of Peace in Tipperary town, where he was presented with the Tipperary International Peace Award in recognition of his humanitarian work in the Third World since he founded GOAL 27 years ago. He called on the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Cowen, to show moral courage by using Ireland's presidency to bring the tragedy of the Congo to the top of the agenda on world political stage.
He said the Government should use its current major influence to promote a worldwide political effort to address a tragedy of gigantic proportions in the Congo, where five million people had been murdered in the last six years and the country's rich resources of diamonds and coltan plundered.
Mr O'Shea said the countries most responsible for the carnage were Rwanda and Uganda, which were friends of the Irish and other Western governments, but which had shown the "two fingers" to the UN when it attempted to address the killing, robbing, and stealing that was widespread in the country.
"Five million people have died in the Congo and the world is ignoring it," he said.
Mr O'Shea dedicated his award to the thousands of Third World missionaries and volunteers who, he said, did not get the recognition they deserved for their great work in Irish society. "These people frequently coped with extraordinary dangers in their work to lessen the suffering of people, but their huge contribution to alleviating Third World suffering was generally overlooked in Ireland.
"It only all comes into focus at times like last December when Archbishop Michael Courtney from Nenagh was savagely murdered in Burundi.
"These people have made a prodigious contribution to alleviate suffering in the face of indifference by governments in the West."
The Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, said the EU and the UN had undertaken a humanitarian relief mission last year aimed at stabilising the situation in the Congo. Both bodies had worked in harmony andhelped to alleviate a situation of humanitarian distress. An EU force was able to carry out its UN mandate of stabilising the area sufficiently to allow a reconstituted UN force to be redeployed there.
Munster MEP Mr Brian Crowley said the strength of the EU was in acting as honest broker to bring warring parties in various parts of the world together to engage in conflict resolution.