Dear Madam,

Behind closed doors in every village and town across Oxfordshire during the Covid-19 lockdown, there is a parallel but mostly invisible crisis for countless women and men suffering in abusive and controlling relationships.

My hope and prayer is that we all listen out for their cry for help, however muffled it is by fear.

But tragically, it's not only individual bullies who are using the pandemic as an opportunity to inflict terror and control whilst the world is looking away.

Abusive regimes like China, Burma and Indonesia are taking the chance to crack down on peoples under their control: Hong Kong, Tibet and the Uighurs under the Chinese dictatorship, the Rohingyas under the Burmese generals and the West Papuans under the mailed fist of Indonesia.

So please do listen for the muffled cry of abused women and men, and in our own community and around the world - even now when we all have so much else on our minds, or maybe especially now.

Yours faithfully

Richard Samuelson

South Street

Middle Barton

Chipping Norton