Blood of millions is on hands of West's spies

However I think it was wrong for the Morning Star editorial to draw comparisons between British intelligence and the demonised "Stasi" (February 11).

Since 1945 Western imperialism has been responsible for the deaths of an estimated 10 million people.

The CIA in particular was behind the 1953 coup in Iran which installed the Shah whose regime tortured and murdered its opponents.

In 1960, the CIA organised the coup in the Congo causing the murder of Patrice Lumumba which resulted in thousands of deaths and the country's ruin.

The CIA orchestrated the 1965 coup in Indonesia which installed the dictator General Suharto, whose regime is estimated to have murdered nearly a million people, mostly communists.

Then there was Chile, where the freely elected socialist President Allende was violently replaced by the dictator Pinochet, who carried out a brutal pogrom against the left.

Che Guevara was murdered on the orders of the CIA. Let's not forget Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, Panama, Grenada and other countries which have been the victims of Western imperialist atrocities over the past 68 years.

Socialist countries including the GDR had to contend with years of US and British subversion.

Whatever the misdeeds the Stasi may have been responsible for in the defence of the GDR, nothing compares with the crimes against humanity by Western imperialism which goes on as witnessed in Libya and other regions across the globe.

Richard Maunders

Axminster