Activist calls on Ireland to accept refugees
That was the message from Columban missionary priest and human rights activist, Fr Shay Cullen speaking in Killarney at the weekend.
Fr Cullen also called for action by national telecommunications providers and by global internet server providers to tackle the “abominable crime” of child pornography.
Fr Cullen, aged 73, had travelled from the Philippines to receive the 9th annual Mons Hugh O’Flaherty international humanitarian award.
The spirit of Mons O’Flaherty was to say ‘yes’ when he saved 6,500 from execution and the gas chambers during the Nazi occupation of Rome, and it is this spirit that is needed once more, Fr Cullen said.
“Here, Ireland is opening it doors wider and has committed to relocate and to resettle 4,000 refugees and will continue to receiving 80 refugees a month. This is an enlightened action but Ireland can do more to help those fleeing oppression, war and dire poverty.
“Our mission in years past has been to go out to the developing countries to help the poor and the needy, the endangered and the downtrodden.
“Nowadays they are here, coming to us in Ireland and in Europe,” said the missionary priest.
He also spoke about the need to “take a stand” for human dignity and speak out in the face of human beings who were felt to have no value.
The same attitude of viewing groups of people as “different, as inferior human beings, as enemies” was at large today in Syria and Iraq.
“We are called to be champions for them, to be a voice for them, and give them a chance for a new life whether they are in the Philippines, in Syria, in Ireland, as Mons Hugh said ‘God has no country’.
The founder of PREDA, a human rights organisation to tackle sexual abuse and trafficking in 1974 , Fr Cullen said the foundation’s social workers were still invloved in rescuing the abused in jails and brothels.
He said the internet had allowed pornography, and particularly child pornography, and the abuse of children, to “explode”.
“The growth of child pornography is absolutely abominable,” the priest said.
In 2009, Fr Cullen was instrumental in the anti-child pornography law in the Philippines which explicitly required the ISPs (internet server providers) to install filters to stop access to child pornography.
But he said that the national telecoms organisations also needed to enforce that law.
A contributor to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, he called on the Government here to put in place legislation to restrict access.
Fr Cullen also spoke about “the grave situation in the Philippines” where state sanctioned executions has led to the deaths of 3,500 young people up to June of this year — many of whom were suspected of being drug users or dealers.
“The killing goes on as I speak to you tonight,” he said, calling for a standto be taken against the death squads.
Fr Cullen had been nominated for the award by Matt Moran, the author of The Legacy of Irish Missionaries Lives On.
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