Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Acting Chairman, for giving us advance notice so we know where we stand in terms of times, etc.

At the outset I welcome my good friend, the Minister of State. I know him personally and I know he is seriously and personally engaged with these issues and is genuinely attempting to deal with them.

I congratulate Senators Mullen and McDowell on the important motion and on raising this serious issue and on their excellent exposition of it. It is such a serious issue. They deserve the commendation and thanks of the House for that.

In essence, what we are talking about is 1 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang held in extra-legal detention camps. We have stories of torture, sterilisation and abortion, etc. It is shocking that these are euphemistically described as vocational training centres. People are held there against their will. This is resonant of what happened in the Second World War. It is shocking. Basically the only symptoms - to use that terrible terminology - or the only criminal dimension of the people held there is that they have certain personal cultural habits and they want to live freely with them.

Advanced technology is used to subdue the general Uyghur population in the province outside the detention centres as well as inside. We have all read about that.

Those of us who read about these things - all of us - are aware that we had a kind of gradualism in the Holocaust. It began with racism or anti-Semitism on the streets. It progressed to detention and then progressed horrifically and tragically to the actual holocaust or final solution. This is similar in the way it is unfolding. As Senator McDowell correctly said, there is no evidence of the horrific final product of the Second World War. At the same time, there is evidence of everything that led up to it. This is when international opinion needs to intervene strongly.

There are various sources of information, including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, various journals and journalists and experts on China. There is unquestionable evidence that in fact the centres of detention are expanding in number and that there are sweeping charges and a range of trumped-up charges used against the people. Eager relatives abroad testify to their cousins and family in the province being held for ten to 15 years on trumped-up or ludicrous charges associated with their personal culture and dignity. Two thirds of mosques have been demolished in the province. As alluded to earlier by Senator Mullen and others, we have evidence of sterilisation and abortions. There is evidence of tragedy and obscene and vile happenings there. The case is unanswerable.

That begs the question of what we do. First of all, we must be an extraordinarily strong voice in Europe. I believe we must be very strong in Europe. If it came to it, and if we were not succeeding on a diplomatic level, then there should be a stronger multilateral approach from Europe in the area of trade and cultural exchanges, etc.

I put it to the Minister of State that we must be out in Europe calling for action and calling on the Chinese to reform and to undo this practice. While all of that must be the case with our European allies, we must be prepared to have the ultimate warning that we are prepared to go further, even at a level of economic cost.

It is important to read into the record quickly some of the initiatives we have taken as a state. I welcome them. I put it to the Minister of State that they are welcome but, at a minimum, we want them to continue and we want more to be done. Ireland was one of 39 states to sign a joint statement at the UN General Assembly Third Committee on 6 October. We also signed a statement at the UN Human Rights Council on 25 September. Ireland was one of 27 states to issue a joint statement of the UN Human Rights Council on 30 June. Ireland was one of 23 states to sign up to a joint statement on the UN General Assembly Third Committee in New York in October 2019. Ireland was one of 22 states to sign up to a joint letter at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in July 2019. Given the hyper-sensitivity of the Chinese regime to international opinion and to projecting, erroneously and tragically in the light of what we have discussed, a positive image, it is important that these exercises have something of a cautionary effect and show that there is a horror in the economic community. I take and accept the point made by the Minister of State that with regard to the trade dimension, we must operate multilaterally in the context of the EU, and then we must take all the other initiatives we have done. I am happy we have been part of every international initiative but we must remain strong. I call on the Minister of State to ensure we are strong within Europe and threaten the nuclear option should it be needed, because this is intolerable. This also extends to Tibet and to thousands of Tibetans held illegally and wrongly in what are, effectively, slave labour camps, dislocated from their communities and moved around China. It is a collective horror. It is a great blemish on modern society and, as Senator O'Loughlin said, we all revel in and welcome our links with China. We are an outgoing people and obviously value trade with other countries. We value cultural exchange, reaching out and making the world smaller in that regard. It is our nature as a people but it cannot be at any price.

I commend the two Senators on the motion which I believe is extraordinarily important. If there were not enough depressing things in our contemporary society at the moment, it is depressing that we are here in the national Parliament in Ireland discussing a matter like this in 2020. It is very sad and it should not be the case. We must stand strongly against it.