Michael KellyHiggins’ human rights concerns gagged by economic intentions?
The Irish Independent had a fairly unreserved apology to President Michael D. Higgins in the newspaper late last week. A day earlier, it had reported that Mr Higgins – on a State visit to communist China – “didn’t raise any human rights concerns” with the autocratic regime during a meeting with President Xi Jinping.
Colette Browne, a columnist with the newspaper who was accompanying President and Mrs Higgins during the trade-centred mission to China, reported that “despite the widespread expectation that Mr Higgins would discuss China’s record on human rights, the President stuck to his cultural and economic script”.
Evidently, mandarins at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (renamed lest there be any doubt that trade is at the centre of Irish foreign policy) were furious. The following morning, on page three no less, the Irish Independent published a ‘retraction and apology’ which read: “In the Irish Independent and Independent online, of Wednesday 10 December, it was stated that ‘President Higgins avoids human rights issues in China’.
“The Irish Independent accepts that this is entirely incorrect and we can confirm that President Higgins did raise and discuss human rights issues with President XI Jinping at a meeting in Beijing yesterday and that he confirmed this fact to Irish media, including the Irish Independent after the meeting.
“We unreservedly apologise for this error,” the retraction concluded.
So, what’s the story? Well, The Irish Times report on the meeting between the President and the authoritarian Mr Xi quoted Mr Higgins as saying “there are indeed very important core human rights, but where this conversation began was in relation to the UN World Millennium Goals and the right to be free from hunger”.
President Higgins, according to The Irish Times, went on to say: “Universality cannot be reduced back to a single source. It has to take…into account different constitutions.”
Different constitutions? Baffled? Me too. Is President Higgins implying that different standards apply to different places? So, for example, freedom of worship might be something which is all well and good in Europe, but not something that Chinese people ought to expect?
President Higgins’ stance in China is in stark contrast with the forthright approach he took during a visit to Ethiopia last month.
During a meeting with Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Mr Higgins said he “discussed how there were essential, basic, rights of the person, which include rights of freedom; we discussed it in terms of acts of privacy, in relation to sexual rights.
“We discussed it [human rights] in relation to what it meant when a country was in transition from authoritarian systems – something we’d know about ourselves.
“I also explicitly raised the question of the freedom to criticise and the issue of journalists’ freedoms.
“We discussed the threat of fundamentalism, posing new threats in Africa; they all arose in the context of human rights,” President Higgins said.
There would appear to be a worrying double-standard. Why, on the one hand, was President Higgins so vocal about human rights in Ethiopia while appearing to remain silent in the face of horrific human rights abuses in China?
Chinese citizens are routinely denied basic human rights. The communist authorities regularly round up Catholic priests and other activists who speak out against the regime’s abuses. Political dissent is quashed ruthlessly, while freedom of association and political thought is severely restricted. Newspapers are heavily censored and press freedom is virtually non-existent. The Irish journalists travelling with President Higgins were unable to tweet the progress of the trip because the social media site Twitter is banned by the communist authorities. The internet, where it is available, is extensively filtered to avoid all references to democracy and other concepts the regime deems dangerous.
So why the reticence about confronting the Chinese, while being happy to wag the finger at the Ethiopians?
Communiqué
A communiqué from the Department of Foreign Affairs (and Trade, remember) sheds some light, pointing out that China “is the world’s most populous country and set to become its largest economy”.
The communique notes that foreign minister Charlie Flanagan also accompanied the President and met officials to discuss “the strong relationship between Ireland and China; measures to increase trade between the two countries, which currently stands at €8billion per annum as well as common approaches to tackling global issues”.
So, it would seem, the chance to sell some beef or cheese to China is far too tempting to worry about trivial issues like human rights.
Sacrificing Ireland’s proud record on human rights is a heavy price to pay.