James O’ Connor, Lakeside
The TV programme Carte Blanche states that it cannot show the photographs of some atrocities because sensitive viewers will be distressed.
CNN says the same about civilian casualties in Syria. This seems unfortunate to me.
If we do not know the full extent of human actions how will we ever be moved to do something about them?
It is since writers began to describe the horrors of war that some readers have begun to oppose war. The atrocities committed on farming families and children are glossed over in newspapers and radio
and TV news. These atrocities are indescribably brutal.
Some of them can be seen on the internet: The photos of women lying spreadeagled, naked, with their vaginas gouged out; bloodied bodies of dead old women who had been raped, their bodies full of wounds, their eyes appearing to peer still at unthinkable horrors; a man finding
his father burned to death, his mother raped and tortured; children and their parents tied
to chairs and bludgeoned to death; a woman reporting how she was raped by two men and then burned by an electric iron so that 80 percent of her body was covered in third degree burns and her skin hung in tatters.
Just touch a hot iron accidentally and you could perhaps begin to get some understanding of what this woman must have suffered. There are obviously people among us who enjoy inflicting pain and it is an obscenity not to show us what they do.
The photos of hardy farmers sobbing uncontrollably over the tortured bodies of their families are heartbreaking. They must feel a terrible
need for revenge and a hatred for those who sing ‘Kill the farmer, kill the Boer’ and encourage violence against farmers.The local commandos used to be the farmers’ best protection but they were disbanded by the government. I am not sure what action should be taken to help farmers, but all compassionate people should call for strong government action, perhaps the use of trustworthy soldiers, special police or the reintroduction of commando units.
These horrors cry out for action.
