Ahern’s cowardly stance of China

FOREIGN Minister Dermot Ahern’s refusal to take a tough stance on China’s brutal repression of Tibet is a disgrace to the Government and to Ireland.

The excuse that we have to do business with China after all the Olympics controversy has died down is pathetic even by the usual ‘cute-hoor’, have-it-every-way response to crises so typical of certain Irish politicians.

The minister cannot see any merit in boycotting the opening ceremony of the games, let alone a complete boycott of the event.

Would Mr Ahern have adopted the same cowardly and unprincipled attitude if he could be transported back in time to the Berlin Olympics of 1936 … bearing in mind how the event boosted the international image and credibility of the genocidal Nazi regime?

I doubt it. Yet he calmly shrugs off the cry for help from the persecuted and brutalised people of Tibet. Instead he panders to the economic power of China and the attractive “market possibilities” it offers the west.

With the greatest respect to athletes everywhere, saving human lives and opposing the Chinese dictatorship’s bloody occupation of Tibet is infinitely more important and more urgent than whatever entertainment value, political prestige or economic advantages might accrue to Ireland and other participating nations from the running, swimming, jumping and other sporting delights due to be performed in Beijing.

I wonder will spectators who travel from Ireland and other ‘respectable’ democratic nations to the games be shielded from the everyday reality of dictatorship that so many ordinary Chinese have to live with?

I presume they will be spared such conscience-prodding distractions, in the same way that the Nazis removed all racist signs, wall slogans and posters for the duration of the 1936 Olympics.

They even allowed Jews to walk the streets freely without the customary harassment.

Dictatorships desperately want to be liked. What a pity our Government hasn’t got the bottle to apply pressure to the tyrants on this occasion to use the Beijing regime’s obsession with not losing face as a lever to support the cause of human rights in China and occupied Tibet.

By its inaction the Government has effectively sided with the oppressor.

We don’t seem to have come all that far politically since the day one of Minister Ahern’s Fianna Fáil icons called to the German embassy to offer his condolences on the death of Herr Hitler.

John Fitzgerald

Lr Coyne Street

Callan

Co Kilkenny