Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

What is happening daily in Aleppo can only be described as an ongoing atrocity. Four hundred people were people killed in September, which amounts to 13 people a day. It is an atrocity being carried out by Russia and the Putin regime with the aim of prolonging the existence of a brutal dictatorship that does not have the support of the majority of the population. This is the aim of the Russian intervention in general and it is having some success. What is happening is horrific and has to be condemned.

Aleppo is emblematic of the nightmare facing the Syrian people in general. Its people are torn apart with three different levels of conflict playing out on the ground. There is a sectarian conflict that exists across the Middle East and is fuelled by imperialist intervention going back to 2003 and slightly before. There is a battle of different regional powers - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Yemen all intervening with their own mechanism to do so. There is also conflict between major imperialist powers on a world scale - Russia, the US, France and other European powers. On the one hand, there is Russia backing the Assad regime and on the other hand, western powers are backing and indirectly funding what are often jihadist groups dressed up as moderate groups because they know that is what has to be done to access funding.

The victims in all of this, as always in war, are the ordinary people. It is incredible that 470,000 people have been killed in the past five years in Syria. The number of internally displaced people is between 7 million and 11 million out of a population of 22 million. It is the destruction of a country and society by this conflict. It is people who are always the victims.

I will take a moment to deal with an accusation that has been made twice and in a more muted form today, particularly by Deputy Micheál Martin, that Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit Deputies are Russian apologists and are soft on Russia. If Deputy Martin knew anything about our position on Syria, he would know that does not hold any water. We have been very clear from the start about our opposition to the Assad regime, our support for those rising up against Assad and our opposition and condemnation of Russian imperialism and intervention.

The only explanation is that it is an utterly hypocritical intervention and a cheap attempt to score political points against his opponents on the left. I looked up the number of times I spoke about Russia and condemned Putin in the European Parliament when I was a Member thereof. In December 2011, I spoke about the mass protests in Russia against rigged elections, referencing my comrades in Russia who are dealing with extremely difficult and repressive circumstances in fighting against the Putin regime. In September 2012, I condemned the imprisonment of the members of Pussy Riot and in October 2013 I condemned the detention of the Arctic 30 Greenpeace activists in Russia. In December 2013, I spoke out on the Russian intervention in Ukraine and in February 2014 I spoke on the repression of LGBT people in Russia. Also in that month I spoke out against what was happening at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, as well as the homophobia and exploitation that takes place in Russia. I also checked the number of times Fianna Fáil MEPs spoke out on what was happening in Russia during that period. The total was zero.

Members of Fianna Fáil discovered this issue recently in order to make cheap political points against people on the left. Why are they doing this? It might be that they just do not know these things and Deputy Martin does not know what is our political position. That is possible but I do not believe it is likely. There are two issues here. One is that Deputy Martin - who was a member of a Government that was closely aligned with US imperialism and that facilitated the use of Shannon Airport for the invasion of Iraq - is offended by the fact that not only do we oppose what is happening in and condemn the bombardment of Aleppo, the acts of Russian imperialism and the fact that 13 people are dying there each day, we also oppose what is happening in Yemen, where 13 people per day are dying as a result of Saudi Arabian airstrikes. Saudi Arabia is one of the main recipients of US aid, including military aid, and is clearly an ally of the US. It is given at least the implicit support of the US in those actions. We also oppose the aerial bombardment of Mosul, in Iraq, that is currently taking place. The problem is that we do not accept that just because one opposes Russian imperialism, one must take the side of western imperialism. It is possible to say that one is opposed to all the different imperialist forces and take the side of ordinary people, be they Kurds, Palestinians or the ordinary people in Syria who are struggling for democratic rights.

The other striking issue is that, for whatever reason - and this is dangerous because his party could be in government at some time - Deputy Martin has taken the decision to hitch Fianna Fáil to the bandwagon of rising tension and conflict between the west and Russia. That tension is occurring globally. There is talk, some of it overblown, of the prospect of a new Cold War, but clearly tensions are rising significantly. They are rising not because western powers care about the humanitarian actions of Putin or his lack of democracy but for geopolitical interests or reasons. The Deputy has decided to do that in line with the Tory party in Britain, and it is extremely dangerous to try to contribute to that rising conflict.

The fundamental problem here is imperialism. It is correct to state that it is due to all the different imperialist interventions, post-11 September 2001, in Afghanistan and Iraq and the nightmare that has been created in the Middle East as a result, in which the Irish Government at that time, including Fianna Fáil, was complicit. However, one can go back further to the Sykes-Picot agreement and the drawing of lines in the Middle East to create artificial states deliberately containing national and ethnic minorities, in order to play the game of divide and rule for the benefit of western imperialist powers in terms of access to oil and resources. Over and over again, it is ordinary people who have suffered. There is an alternative. It involves an end to imperialist intervention, landlordism and capitalism in the region, and using the resources that exist for the benefit of ordinary people.

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