Letters: The camera and the pen bear witness to genocidal regimes

Irish Independent

2 days ago

During this summer of 2025, I read a piece shared on Facebook in which the French foreign minister urged Israel to allow foreign press into the Gaza Strip. The words 'Bear witness' stare out at me from my screen.
We have all seen images and docu­mentary evidence of Gaza and the horrors that are being inflicted on the Palestinian people.
I have had fear and concern about sharing images and reports, not because of the shock and dismay this brings into our comfortable homes (I believe we should be awake and informed), but because I worried that sharing these images and reports might mean that reporters are targeted – which, by all accounts and most recent attacks, suggest they are.
If the answer to Medb Ruane's question was 'no', then reporters and photographers from outside would have the freedom to do their job in safety.
I believe the answer to her question is most definitely 'yes', because exposure through the power of the lens and pen is something that a genocidal regime would have obvious fears about.
Margaret O'Brien, Nenagh, Co Tipperary
US needs to take control of its own future and stop playing the short game
Looking at what is happening in the US isn't politics as we used to know it.
It's more like a card game in which the players are spending money they don't have, knowing they'll be gone before the bill arrives. Leaders grab what they can today and leave the mess for someone else tomorrow.
Take the latest in Washington DC. Donald Trump declares crime is out of control, sending federal agents and National Guard troops to 'stop violent crime' and pushing to charge teen­agers as young as 14 as adults ('Donald Trump claims crime in Washington DC is out of control. Here's what the data shows', Irish Independent, August 12).
Yet official data show juvenile arrests in DC are down nearly 20pc this year, violent crime is falling and homicide rates are at multi-decade lows nationally.
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The 'out of control' narrative is largely a political performance that obscures the reality, but that doesn't mean serious problems don't exist.
Bit by bit, the US government is being hollowed out, markets are left to run wild and ordinary people are left with fewer tools to deal with big problems like climate change and disappearing jobs. People end up tired, distracted and too busy to look ahead.
If nothing changes, America will split in two. One side will be wealthy and mobile, taking advantage of new technology and global markets, while the other will be stuck with climate disasters, fewer jobs and crumbling services. The gap will grow until each side might as well be living in a different country.
Ireland has learnt the hard way that if you don't take control of your own future, someone else will – and they won't do it for your benefit.
America has to decide soon whether to keep playing the short game or start building something that lasts.
Enda Cullen, Tullysaran Road, Armagh
Fair play, Charlie Weston, for highlighting forever rising cost of electricity
Charlie Weston is doing us all some service with his persistence in highlighting the excessive cost of electricity and the dreadful misery being inflicted on many households as a consequence ('Fears of arrears crisis as record number of families are three months or more behind on energy bills', August 12)
But it seems that no one in the Government is listening, and certainly no one seems to want to discuss the elephant in the room – the negative impact on charges that the decision to transform this natural monopoly into an artificial, competitive market has had.
As pointed out before, when electricity was generated and supplied by a single semi-state entity, the ESB, Ireland enjoyed the lowest electricity charges in Europe.
The reason is very simple: in the privatised scenario, householders are not only having to pay the cost of generation and supply as they did under the semi-state ESB, but on top of that they now must fund the profit margin, the multiple CEOs and duplicated management structures and, by far the most outrageous, the cost of all the advertising we see every night on our TVs as the various entities now sitting between the customer and access to electricity compete for our attention at our expense.
Surely with such a vital social good, such a waste is indefensible.
The failure to properly debate the decision to outsource this vital service at the time meant that citizens were essentially in the dark.
Jim O'Sullivan, Rathedmond
False promises of more gardaí on beat when there aren't enough in the force
My motorbike was stolen last evening outside my work premises in Artane.
Many of us have experienced that dreaded feeling of walking out and discovering that your car or motorbike has been taken and, most likely, burnt out or otherwise destroyed.
The gardaí were brilliant and did everything in their power to get it back, but, unfortunately, when dealing with stolen bikes their hands are tied.
The political lip service is to get more gardaí on the streets while knowing there aren't enough officers to patrol the country as a whole. I can understand why young people don't want to join the force when every action is scrutinised and videoed.
On a recent trip to Cardiff on my motorbike, I noted that it is a very safe city to walk around as they have employed city wardens, akin to the security people on the Dart, who wear hi-vis jackets and patrol the city centre in small groups during the day and on Friday and Saturday evenings, helping tourists and dealing with anti-social behaviour.
Basically, they are a step down from the gardaí, but bring a feeling of security.
Aidan Hampson, Artane, Dublin
Why am I always 12th in the telephone queue when calling our state services?
It is amusing that when you ring any of our state services, the first thing you hear is that 'we are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls'.
I phoned a public body at 1.30pm on Monday and was told I was 12th in the queue, so I rang off. I rang again at 4pm to again be told I was still in 12th place. That 11th caller must be some yapper.
Tom Gilsenan, Beaumont, Dublin 9