Madam, - The fact that Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni shook the hands of 36 heads of state when he hosted last weekend's Commonwealth summit should be a cause of shame for the Commonwealth and the international community as a whole.
When he came to power 21 years ago Museveni seemed as if he would be the leader who would finally take Uganda out of the shadow of dictators such as Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Instead he has become just as brutal.
During the election in 2005 he changed the electoral system to allow him to stand for a third term. During that same election the opposition leader Kizza Besigye was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of rape and treason, meaning he was unable to campaign against Museveni.
Torture has also become commonplace in Musevani's Uganda. In the past 10 years over 7,500 complaints of torture and cruel or inhuman treatment have been made to the Ugandan Human Rights Commission. The media are censored, protests are suppressed and corruption has invaded every aspect of the state structure.
The story of Uganda is an all too common one on the African continent: while the privileged elite are busy taking their cut, the average person falls further and further into poverty.
Goal has been working in Uganda since 1979, delivering healthcare, nutrition, water, sanitation, shelter and HIV/Aids services with our donor partners the European Commission and Irish Aid. Its people will know prosperity only when their government is free of corruption and is led by someone with the best interests of its people at heart.
The hypocrisy of letting Museveni host this summit is staggering. Gordon Brown has refused to attend the European Union/African Union summit in December if it is attended by Robert Mugabe. Yet last weekend he happily met Yoweri Museveni.
Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in 1991 for breaches of governance and human rights. Yet the leaders of that same organisation decamped to Kampala to share in the hospitality of a man who led an army into the Democratic Republic of Congo to loot its resources - for which the east African Court of Justice ruled Uganda must repay £5.6 billion incompensation.
It is only when the international community has the courage to stand up to all dictators that we will begin to see an end to abject poverty. - Yours, etc,
JOHN O'SHEA,
Goal,
Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.