Michael Kelly“Ireland has traditionally had an enviable reputation for raising human rights concerns at home and abroad”, writes Editor Michael Kelly
It’s common to look back to the past and wonder why people tolerated things that were so clearly wrong. Why, for example, did communities across Ireland – by and large – not raise concerns about the treatment of children who had effectively been warehoused in a network of industrial schools?
We sometimes wonder, too, about how so many ordinary decent Germans could turn a blind eye to the deportation of their Jewish neighbours to Nazi death camps.
Following the horrendous genocide in Rwanda in 1994 – when an estimated one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in a three month period – the international community stood accused of standing on the sidelines while the violence continued. “Never again!” was the battle cry – as familiar as it was hollow.
And yet, that is exactly what the international community is now doing in the face of the insane genocidal campaign of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) against Christians and other minority communities in the Middle East.
Silent
Irish politicians have been largely silent on the issue. Though there have been some noble exceptions. Independent deputy Mattie McGrath has been a long-time critic of the consensus of silence around the persecution of Christians around the world.
This week Fianna Fáil has taken up the mantle of leadership on the issue. That party’s spokesman on foreign affairs told the Dáil: “The treatment and persecution of Christians and other religious groups must not be allowed to continue.”
Deputy Smith further expressed the view that Ireland “has a responsibility as a member of the European Union and as a member of the United Nations to speak up and to push for the UN Security Council to engage the International Criminal Court on this issue”.
Legislators in Britain’s House of Commons recently unanimously voted 278-0 to declare the campaign waged by so-called Islamic State against Christians, Yazidis and other religious groups as genocide.
The Dáil and Seanad should do likewise. Ireland has traditionally had an enviable reputation for raising human rights concerns at home and abroad. This reputation has been somewhat tarnished in recent years as trade and investment have often trumped human dignity when it has come to this State’s human rights agenda. Leading figures – including President Michael D. Higgins – have been less than forthright in raising the issue of human rights abuse in China, for example.
Struggle
When one meets Christians who live and struggle in challenging parts of the world where their faith brings suffering and persecution, one of the things they find difficult to understand is why traditionally Christian nations in the west are so silent in the face of their suffering.
Ireland has a responsibility to use its voice and influence in the international community to agitate for the suffering minority communities in the Middle East. Having the honesty to call the barbarism what it is – genocide, would be a good start.
I believe that as a sovereign state Ireland should stand in solidarity with the victims and do the same.