Taoiseach branded a ‘coward’ on rights

Enda Kenny was branded a “coward” yesterday for failing to press visiting Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping harder on human rights abuses.

In angry Dáil exchanges, Socialist TD Joe Higgins accused the Taoiseach of a “shameful” betrayal of prisoners of conscience in China. He said the situation had worsened in the country in the past year as Mr Xi jostled to take over as leader.

Amnesty International had asked the Taoiseach to raise specific cases with Mr Xi, such as that of nobel prize-winner Liu Xiaobo, who received an 11-year sentence for urging peaceful democratic reforms, but Mr Kenny had been too “obsequious” to do so, Mr Higgins said.

“Mr Xi, as the second most senior leader in the Chinese government, is personally responsible for a regime that routinely brutally crushes all democratic rights of its people, stands over the disappearance and torture of thousands of citizens, presides over a brutal regime of super exploitation of workers, many of whom are employed in companies contracted by western multinationals, where no free trade unions are allowed, and crushes the self-determination rights of the people of Tibet,” said Mr Higgins.

The Socialist TD added that repression had increased in the past year.

“Did the Taoiseach not think it shameful and a cowardly abdication of his responsibility to stand against the crushing of human rights, when he made a speech to the China Trade and Investment Forum, in the presence of the vice-president of China, and with a total of 2,247 words, could not find a single word to demand publicly an end to this brutal repression and the crushing of the rights of the Chinese people to democracy and freedom?”

Mr Kenny said the visit had been intended to improve trade links, but rights abuses had been mentioned.

“I did not raise individual issues with the Chinese vice-president. I raised the question of human rights with him. I put forward the clear position that this country has always been a proponent of human rights around the world.

“He made the point in his response that no country has a perfect human rights record. That is understandable.

“I also referred in my discussions with the Chinese vice-president on the situation in Syria, and the rape, mutilation, and savagery that is going on there and the human rights in respect of those people,” said Mr Kenny, adding that he learned of the Amnesty request through the media.