Indeed, it would be funny were it not so tragic to hear that Khartoum is sending 10,000 additional troops to the region to form part of their own 'peace' keeping force, which is like the Nazis announcing the SS were being sent into the Warsaw Ghetto to do social work.

Darfur has been Africa's Auschwitz for almost four years and the world has allowed the Sudanese government to make a mockery out of international concern for the civilian population there.

Certainly, China bears a huge responsibility in providing consistent and relentless support in the Security Council for the genocidal Khartoum regime, and as the biggest foreign investor, and customer, in the country's oil industry, it is vital to the regime's survival. Singling out China may seem unfair, given so many other countries are also culpable through omission and commission. However, as it effectively controls the economic lifeline that keeps the regime in power, it has the power to at least help to prevent a speeded-up version of the slaughter that has taken place over the last few years.

If China were a democracy, and censorship was not ruthlessly enforced, I have no doubt the Chinese people would be to the fore in demanding an end to the Darfur genocide. Indeed, we are implicated in that censorship regime, because Yahoo, Microsoft and Google all have a strong presence in Ireland, and were indicted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in major reports over the last few weeks in helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to censor the internet and suppress dissent.

Indeed, given that what is going on there would be as reprehensible to the people of China . . . if more of them were aware of it . . . as it is to the rest of us, we have as much responsibility to oppose Chinese censorship as we have to campaign against genocide, as the Chinese government is de facto bankrolling the Sudanese regime, through trade and investment.

Ronan Tynan, Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin