MINISTER FOR Sport Séamus Brennan has warned that if the Chinese government does not continue to improve its human rights record, the Government will consider boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
In the most outspoken comments to date from a Fianna Fáil Minister on the controversial issue of China's human rights record, Mr Brennan said that the Government has continued in recent months to "remind the Chinese and the Tibetan people that we are unhappy with the human rights issues surrounding what they do".
Speaking on TV3's The Political Party, Mr Brennan said the guaranteed attendance of the Government at the opening ceremony may be conditional on an improvement in human rights.
"It is some months away and we will have to watch closely how they behave and how they perform; if it is a thing that they don't respond in a way that is satisfactory then we would have the option of not attending the opening ceremony," he said.
The Minister said that he had discussed the matter with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, and stressed that the Government needed to give the matter more time before arriving at a final decision. He was also careful to include pro-Tibet activists in his comments.
"That time will be used to remind the Chinese and the Tibetans, both of them, that there is still time to show an improvement in their human rights issue and to call on them to show those improvements. Assuming that they show improvements there is no reason why we can't attend the opening ceremonies. On the other hand if those human rights issues were to deteriorate I think we should again consider our attendance."
Mr Ahern hinted at the possibility of a boycott of the opening ceremony during a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Ljubljana in Slovenia at the end of March. However, moves to get backing from all 27 EU member states for a collective boycott failed.
Mr Brennan's comments were made a little over a week after the Chinese ambassador walked out of the Green Party conference during party leader John Gormley's address to the conference. Mr Gormley accused the Chinese government of abusing human rights but the ambassador took particular exception to the Green Party leader's reference to Tibet as a country.
The following day, Mr Ahern said that if he himself were sports minister he would not be inclined to go to the opening ceremony.
"I think it's a bit of tokenism to be honest because as we move on after the Olympics, we still have to deal with the Chinese. You know, who really worries whether a minister is at an opening ceremony or not?" he asked.
Elsewhere Mr Brennan would not be drawn into commenting about the make-up of taoiseach-designate Brian Cowen's cabinet. He said he had no opinion on reports that said he would be dropped as a minister or others that named him as favourite to become tánaiste. He said he had no particular ambition to become tánaiste.
The Green Party's spokesman in government last night said that the comments of Mr Brennan were interesting but that the question of a boycott was ultimately one for the Cabinet to decide.
He pointed out that the Green Party conference had overwhelmingly adopted a motion calling on the opening ceremony to be boycotted.
