Secrecy over mother and baby homes needs to stop

I WRITE to express my vehement opposition to the passing of legislation which will result in the sealing of mother and baby home records for a further 30 years. The enacting of this legislation by the Oireacthas at this time is a wholly unjust act. Doing so will only serve to further perpetuate unwarranted State and Church secrecy in relation to one of the grimmest chapters in our country’s history.

I strongly advocate that these r e c or ds be deposited a nd catalogued in t he National Archives for posterity.

A specialist unit should be established within the National Archives with all the necessary supports in place to enable victims of these heinous human rights violations t o access t hese distressing records. We should not be so quick to trust the State in relation to management of the mother and baby homes archives and the preservation of archives more generally. The State’s track record is reprehensible in these matters.

The countless victims of this monstrous episode in our history and their relatives deserve the opportunity to access these records in pursuance of some form of justice and closure.

The hasty locking down of these archives pertaining to some of our country’s darkest historical secrets should surely not have been part of a priority legislation programme to be enacted during pandemic lockdown.

PAUL HORAN, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing & Midwifery,

Trinity College Dublin.

France’s grim history

PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron of France is telling the world of the civilised values of his country, amid criticisms because of his response to the brutal murder of a teacher by a Muslim radical.

What is conveniently forgotten by France is the fact that history cannot be overly kind to a country which has exported colonial misery and death to Islamic nations in the Middle East and north Africa. France adopts a skewed sense of nationalistic amnesia when confronted with the truths of its history of invasion and subjugation of countries it sought to rule over with an iron fist.

When France withdrew from Algeria in 1962 after a century and a half, it took a fierce seven-year war of liberation against this illegal occupation by the people of that country.

The Paris administration left 1million natives dead, slaughtered in well- documented accounts of colonial horror. This stain on the character of France’s recent past, which occurred while the ‘civilised’ world stood idly by, had nothing to do with liberty, equality and fraternity. ROBERT SULLIVAN,

Bantry, Co. Cork.

Tech firm tyranny

AS eary as April this year, the BBC reported that YouTube was banning any coronavirus-related content that directly contradicted the World Health Organization’s (WHO) advice.

A plethora of medical doctors, researchers, and scientists were banned. This scenario is totally ridiculous, but because these unelected tech companies implement this censorship, it becomes acceptable by default.

At worst these medical professionals could be termed ‘contrarians’, but to shut down these people is an act of tyranny and goes directly against the values and principles acceptable within a free society.

LOUIS SHAWCROSS, Hillsborough, Co. Down.

Trump’s fake news

WHEN will it end? Not the Covid pandemic but Donald Trump’s mishandling of the truth about it. His latest statement inferring that doctors and hospitals will misrepresent the state of case numbers and deaths to get more funding is insulting and wrong. If it is a matter of getting medical information from doctors or politicians, I choose doctors as I want to live! DENNIS FITZGERALD,

Melbourne, Australia.