A United Nations report which finds that the People’s Republic of China has committed serious human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups is a damning indictment that Ireland and the EU cannot ignore.
Yet silence is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party will use fear, threats and intimidation to achieve.
The report released by UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet on her last day in office documents “far-reaching, arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms, in violation of international norms and standards”.
It finds reports of arbitrary detention, widespread torture, sexual violence, forced sterilisation of women and forced labour to be credible, and that these could amount to the “commission of international crimes, including crimes against humanity”.
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The high commissioner, who visited the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in May, told of the pressure she was put under not to release this report. Shocking as this is, it should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed how China operates internationally.
In February the Chinese embassy in Dublin opposed our elected representatives meeting Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, when he visited Leinster House.
Some TDs and Senators ignored the threats and listened to him speak of how more than one million Uyghurs have been imprisoned without trial and how torture and rape are widespread in these camps. He told how his mother died in such a camp in 2018 and how most of his family have disappeared.
While some TDs and Senators listened, most ran a mile. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, and officials from his department also refused to meet him.
Yet when it comes to meeting his Chinese counterpart, Coveney does not hesitate. For the Government, ensuring access to the Chinese market for Irish beef takes precedence over confronting Beijing about its crimes against humanity.
Some of our elected representatives - MEP Mick Wallace being most prominent - have gone further.
Wallace gave an interview to Newstalk last year in which he said reports of what is happening in Xinjiang are “grossly exaggerated”. In the same interview he likened Uyghur testimony of abuse to “grumbling about Micheál Martin”.
When evidence of this campaign of repression began to emerge in 2017, the Chinese government denied its existence. When this evidence became overwhelming, they reversed tactics admitting the camps were real but called them “vocational training centres”.
They were, in the Chinese government’s words, a way to treat the “ideological sickness” of people who did not appreciate how much the Communist Party had done for them.
We have remained silent as our trade with China increases, while the number of people employed here by Chinese companies with links to the Communist Party, such as Tiktok and Huawei, has risen
China has long attempted to manipulate and dominate the global discourse on Xinjiang. It is engaged in a sophisticated campaign to drown out critical narratives by flooding search engines and social media with AI generated postings that appear to support its repression. It also uses old-fashioned threats and cyber bullying to intimidate and silence those who criticise or question its policies or intent.
The Uyghur community in Ireland knows only too well what these threats mean for them and their families in China.
Ireland was elected to the United Nations Security Council with a campaign stressing how human rights are central to our foreign policy. Yet we have sat beside the People’s Republic of China on that council, and said nothing. Our diplomats’ success in securing the seat has to mean more than just flashy promotional videos and status. It has to be more than empty rhetoric.
We have remained silent as our trade with China increases, while the number of people employed here by Chinese companies with links to the Communist Party, such as Tiktok and Huawei, has risen.
British, French and Dutch parliaments have declared what is happening in Xinjiang to be genocide. Our silence increasingly seems like culpability.
I have lived most of my adult life in China and I can say with certainty that the vast majority of Chinese people are good, decent, kind and compassionate. But their government hides what it is doing to their fellow citizens, it has such control over the media and public discourse that they cannot know.
Yet in Ireland we do know, we can see the evidence and yet our government remains silent.
Evidence for crimes against humanity in Xinjiang is now overwhelming, and it is time to speak out with the same level of commitment to human rights that we have spoken of when it comes to Ukraine. We cannot pick and choose which to condemn based purely on our economic interests.
In this country we know too well the power of silence, how fear and threats cause good people to turn away. History will judge us for our silence and in time we may be called to account for why our government put trade before people’s lives.
David O’Brien is a lecturer in the faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He researches and writes on ethnic identity in Xinjiang