What is a child’s life worth?

Today has been a glorious autumn day in Wales.  The sky is a brilliant blue and the sun reminds us of the promise of life.  So today, my wife and I visited Aberfan where fifty years ago 128 children and 18 adults died in an accident so dreadful, that we still weep and recoil with shock when we recall that ghastly day.

There are many of course, who do not recall this day at all, they live with it day by day.  They awake to the loss of their child or children, their friends and families.  The poignant memorial garden and cemetery will wrench any visitor’s heart, but for those whose children lie there, there can be no respite. Such pain is unimaginable, for each parent, every day is one of loss. There is no momentary sadness, there is a gap never to be filled, and there is despair that wakes with every morning.  The community, so brave, has bound the wounds but will never be able to banish the pain.

Yet despite this and other tragedies that have struck all around the world, the world seems powerless to stop the war criminals who murder children deliberately every day.  It is almost too much to take in!  How could anyone countenance the murder of hundreds of innocent children not once, but day in and day out.

It matters not what Putin and Assad pretend to see, it is each child that screams with fear and pain that does.

It matters not what the rebels claim, if the cost of their glory is the agony of just one child.

There is not much else to be said, except to cry – no more, no more!