Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Tánaiste for having come here and I wish him well in the Dáil. I also thank my Fianna Fáil colleagues for tabling this important motion for discussion this evening. It is remarkably courageous of you, a Chathaoirligh, to stay in the Chair following the recent torpedo you received from the Chinese Embassy in Dublin for congratulating the people of Taiwan on their election, but these things happen.

I want to talk about a small number of issues. I agree completely with what Senator Mullen said about that nature of the Chinese Government. I would go further. We should never forget that the Chinese Communist Party is a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship and nothing else. It suppresses all human rights on true Marxist-Leninist lines. They are inferior to the right of the party as the voice of the people to exercise whatever authority the party decides is necessary to remain in power in China.That involves ruthlessly suppressing any internal democracy or dissent, jailing people, executing people, re-educating people, taking on entire ethnic minorities such as the Tibetans and the Uyghur people of Xinjiang province and treating them in a manner which is barbaric, to put it mildly, breaking up families, forcing abortions on women, forcing men to take off their beards, and rounding up Uyghurs from education camps and sending them in trains to work in forced labour around China. This is China today. We can have respect for Chinese culture and the Chinese people themselves, as Senator Byrne said, but let us never, ever forget that this government is probably the most hostile to human rights of any government on the planet, and in the company of Putin and Kim Jong Un, that is saying something. They are ruthless in the extreme and nobody should ever lose sight of that fact.

Another thing that I want us to remember is that without any permission from the Irish State, the Chinese established a police station in Capel Street. The purpose of that police station was to exercise effective de factocontrol over Chinese expatriates in Ireland. It was only when this accidentally came to the notice of the Irish authorities that it was closed down, but the fact that it was done without even a request to the Irish authorities for permission to do it shows how arrogant and overweening their attitude is.

Senator Mullen and I are NUI Senators. Like him, I am deeply suspicious of the Confucius Institute at UCD. I believe it is largely there to ensure political conformity among Chinese expatriate third level and postgraduate students, to keep an eye on them, to make sure they do not become infected with democratic, liberal or western values and to report back on them to Beijing. Sadly, I think they use the worst possible methods, including getting students to spy on each other, so living as a Chinese expatriate third level or postgraduate student in Ireland is by no means a liberating experience where you can kick off your shoes and enjoy the freedom of the West. It is none of those things. It is the subject of deep surveillance, full stop. Universities in Ireland are supposed to be institutions of freedom of thought, so how do they bring a cell into a university campus whose whole ethos, while pretending to be cultural and to be interested in Chinese culture, is in fact paid for, sponsored and operated as an agency of a tyrannical regime?

To conclude, it is very strange how in this country the left go silent on Chinese human rights. We never hear them in here and, whether it is soft left or hard left, they never come in to express any problems with this. They hardly even care about North Korea, they do not care very much about the suppression of human rights in Cuba and there is not a squeak out of them on the subject of the suppression of human rights and human liberty by the most totalitarian government on this planet.

I welcome and support the motion. I thank the Fianna Fáil Senators, in particular Senator Malcolm Byrne, for moving it.