Biafra (and Guernica)
Sir: Lady Hunt says (21 January) there was 'no genocide' in the Biafra conflict. Two million dead (she adds) is 'an absurd figure'; even propagandists 'have come down to one million', while `the true figure is something like a tenth of that'. What would we think of the humanity of someone who wrote of the second war holocaust, that there was 'no genocide' of Jews, that even pro-Zionist propagandists have 'come down' to four million, while the true figure is 'a tenth of that'? After all, not only Palestinian scholars like Sami Hadawi have so claimed, but also western researchers like Arthur Butz and Paul Rassinier. However, the murder of innocent civilians, whatever their number or nationality, is so reprehensible that its condemnation cannot simply be dismissed as an 'obsession'.
We need more humanity and more accuracy, but less partisan propaganda in these matters. The Guernica issue remains a case in point. Peter Kemp is surely right in stating that the town was bombed by aeroplanes and dynamited by certain Republicans. The total pattern of destruction was beyond the technical capability of Nationalist aircraft, as Brian Crozier has shown, and solid proof that much of the town was subjected to organised incendiarism was inttoduced to the British public in 1938 by Sir Arnold Wilson with a fully documented, illustrated report scarcely remembered today.
Robert Stanton Bodgara Way, Liskeard
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