Madam, - Recent media focus on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide brings back to mind the dreadful days of 1994 - not that I could ever forget the scenes I witnessed at the time.
Not only were the Tutsi people betrayed by the international community whilst they were being slaughtered inside their own country, they were also badly let down when they emerged in their thousands to seek shelter in refugee camps in Zaire.
Along with the feeding and medical work we did in the camps, my colleagues and I in GOAL had the unenviable job of burying the many thousands of cholera victims who had died needlessly because the United Nations could not arrange to supply the camps with clean water. There were so many bodies to be disposed of that sometimes as we loaded what we thought were corpses into trucks, they would cry out in pain and anguish.
To add insult to injury the international community also turned the other way when Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda for the past ten years, and his RPF troops murdered hundreds of thousands of Hutus who had fled to neighbouring Zaire.
It angers me to hear the fuss that is being made about the events of ten years ago when I can well remember the frustration of trying to get anyone to listen at the time. I also find it strange that Rwanda receives so much in the way of overseas aid when there is little doubt that Kagame's regime is corrupt and guilty of many human rights abuses.
I have no doubt that this money is paid more out of a sense of shame than any informed opinion that it is helping the Rwandan people to recover and rebuild.
I do however know that, for the people of Rwanda, the suffering continues, with many thousands of women who suffered continued gang rape ten years ago still traumatised and many dying of HIV/AIDS.
Thousands of orphans have been left to make their own way in the world with precious little in the way of assistance from anyone either domestic or foreign.
So, let's have none of this "never again" nonsense that first echoed around the halls of power after the second World War and still reverberates today.
Try telling that to the countless and uncounted victims of Pol Pot, the millions of Chinese people who perished during Mao's "great leap forward" (27 million from famine alone) or the 8,000 men and boys of Srebrenica.
Many millions of people in the world today are still being targeted because of their religion or race - people such as the million or so who have been recently displaced in Western Sudan.
And still the world looks the other way. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN O'SHEA, GOAL, PO Box 19, Dún Laoghaire.