Sir, - In the past few days there has been a tragic contrast in the public reaction to, and the media treatment of, two murders. In Spain, 29-year-old Miguel Angel Blanco was shot in the head as a result of belonging to the wrong party and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eighteen-year-old Bernadette Martin was shot in the head for a similar crime. Wrong religion, wrong place, wrong time.
Blanco's murder resulted in four-and-a-half million Spaniards - who have seen 800 murders for the same cause already - take to the streets to publicly express their anger, sorrow and grief. In Ireland, the escape of a juvenile delinquent - a 16-year-old beneficiary of the media's glamorisation of crime - took precedence over Bernadette's murder, coverage of which was very limited. No one took to the streets for her. The usual platitudes and condemnations were all she got.
I am 18. If I was shot four times while sleeping because I loved a Protestant, I would want everyone to be angry. Over opportunities denied, choices not made, a life not lived. Have we lost the capacity to feel angry - to feel outraged? Have we finally been numbed by apathy? Many regard Blanco's murder to be the death knell for ETA because of the rage it provoked. We need to show ours. - Yours, etc., FIONA CLANDILLON, Skerries, Co Dublin.