I move:
That Seanad Éireann requests the Government and the Minister for External Affairs to take further steps in the General Assembly of the United Nations to expedite the sending of an international commission to South Africa to investigate the conditions under which political prisoners and other prisoners of conscience are held in that country; and also requests that the Government should make contributions to the United Nations Trust for South Africa and to the United Nations Education and Training Programme for South Africans.
Since this motion was put on the Order Paper there have been two encouraging actions by our Minister for External Affairs. First of all, many of us welcome his strong condemnation before the General Assembly of the United Nations on 4th May of South Africa's refusal to withdraw from South West Africa. He also, we read with acclamation, requested firm action by the Security Council of the United Nations on this matter. There was a second action which, I think, all of us welcome, too. The Government decided that they would make a contribution to the United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa. The sum that the Government allocated was $1,000 for the year 1967-68.
Previously, some 25 nations had contributed sums to this fund. The contributions ranged from $50,000 by Sweden—I should like to emphasise that Sweden has been extraordinarily enlightened and generous in their dealings with this problem in South Africa —to $1,000 by Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cyprus, Guinea, Israel, Turkey and ourselves. No contribution has yet been made by our Government to the United Nations Education and Training Programme though already 17 other States have contributed or pledged contribution to this. I hope our Government may see their way to make a contribution to this fund also.
Perhaps at this point I should give the House a brief description of these two most meritorious funds. Both, of course, are the direct result of the appalling conditions caused by South Africa's policy of apartheid. First, let me outline what the United Nations Trust Fund is trying to do. It was established by the General Assembly on the 15th of December, 1965. Its purpose is to make grants to voluntary organisations and other appropriate bodies towards relieving dependants of persons suffering under the Government of South Africa for their opposition to apartheid. It also makes grants towards providing legal assistance to persons charged under the discriminatory legislation of the South African Government. It offers grants also towards educating prisoners in South Africa and their dependants, and giving general relief to refugees from South Africa. The Chairman of the Committee of this United Nations Trust Fund has made the following comment on the general aim of his Fund. I quote:
Its purpose is to meet a limited, albeit urgent and clear need of a humanitarian character. There is no doubt, however, that if assistance is given to the victims of apartheid by joint efforts of the international community, this provides moral support....
I emphasise that. It is not just a matter of money. Let me return to the quotation:
.... to those inside and outside South Africa who work for racial equality and social justice. In this sense, our work has implications beyond the purely humanitarian field. It is important that this bond of human solidarity be preserved.
That is the first fund.
Let me say a word or two about the second. The United Nations Education and Training Programme in South Africa was also established in 1965. As its name implies, it is specially directed towards the education and training of South Africans of all races in exile from their own country—training them especially as lawyers, engineers, agriculturalists, public administrators, teachers and skilled workers. This is the fund to which Ireland has not yet made a contribution. In fact the contributions in general amount to only something like 200,000 dollars according to my latest information, whereas the target is 2 million dollars by 1968.
Those are the two funds. The position is that Ireland is subscribing to one at present, not to the other. While these two funds can do much good to improve the lot of the oppressed majority, and remember it is the majority, just as it was in Ireland 200 years or so ago, of South Africans, yet something far more drastic is needed to remove the root cause of these harsh conditions. This brings me to the other recommendation in the motion before the House. I shall read it once again:
That Seanad Éireann requests the Government and the Minister for External Affairs to take further steps in the General Assembly of the United Nations to expedite the sending of an international commission to South Africa to investigate the conditions under which political prisoners and other prisoners of conscience are held in that country.
This is a matter of extreme urgency. As I speak here in this House, I am conscious that in South Africa at this moment there are hundreds of defenceless political prisoners detained in atrocious conditions. At this moment some of them are probably being brutally tortured, while we in civilised Western Europe debate and delay. I should like the House to realise that. Every delay in action of this kind means pain and agony of mind and body of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of our fellow human beings. The evidence for these atrocities is, I think, beyond question. Let me emphasise—these atrocities are committed on one basis and one basis alone, namely, on something that is given by God, something that nobody has a choice about—the colour of people's skins. I do not want to harrow the House by quoting details of the kind of thing going on at this very moment in South Africa. Those details can be made available to any Member of the House. I can supply them with reliable sources who will give them every help in the matter. The punishments range from starvation, fifth, forcible degradation and gross indignities to beatings and tortures as bad as anything attributed to the Nazi Gestapo or to the communist secret police. I have here before me a description by an eye-witness, Mr. Dennis Brutus, of what he personally suffered. There are the routine things—the beatings, the starvings and all the rest of it but there are worse things and I must mention them for a moment. I shall read a paragraph from the statement of Mr. Dennis Brutus as to the conditions on Robben Island. This is what he says:
An evil place. A vicious place. Of this one was aware daily, in a thousand ways. For some, it was the appalling depravity of the criminals, the forced sodomies,
I hope we realise the implications of that—"the forced sodomies"—
the boots lashing out, the self-made knives flashing. For others the viciousness of the warders, their apostolic zeal in defence of their fascist regime, their anxiety to break the spirits of the men who opposed their society. And for some, simply the horror of the sterility and barrenness of existence in those concrete grey walls and roofs and passages; an entirely grey existence. And the knowledge that men have been condemned to live out their lives amid this stone. That they would serve a life sentence here— here literally be asked to end their lives.
That is what we are debating about today. That is what we are trying to reach a decision about.
The most diabolical aspect of this persecution in South Africa is this. It is based on a difference entirely beyond the control of the victim—his natural colour and his race. In this respect, it is worse than any religious or political persecution, as such. I know that this is a daring statement to make in this country but I believe I can justify it. The person who is persecuted for his religion or his politics has at least the choice—perhaps at the risk of the eternal soul—but he has the choice, of changing his principles and of escaping further persecution—in fact, possibly—as we have seen in this country in the past—he would get a certain amount of favour for that change. But this is what the coloured South African is entirely debarred from doing by the fact that he is born not white. He is condemned to this; if he makes the slightest opposition to injustice he is condemned to this. Nothing that he can do can change his colour.
A few months ago I was reading in the British Museum and, in a moment of revelation, I saw the kind of feeling that this atrocious policy is engendering in educated coloured people from Africa. In a certain purlieu of the British Museum there was written on the wall the following statement: "Brown, yellow, red are the colours of nature. Albinoids are diabolical apparitions". We are the albinoids from the point of view of people whose hearts have been filled with hatred as a result of the apartheid policy and we are the diabolical apparitions. When we see our faces in such a looking-glass so to speak we realise the kind of pressure of anger that is building up as a result of this policy.
I shall not delay on that side of it. I think the majority of people in Ireland understand what persecution for principles alone is like. Obviously, subscription to such funds as are mentioned in the motion cannot stop these abominable injustices. They can only do something to mitigate the inhumanity that comes from this evil of apartheid. If we send a commission and if it sees what is happening, the conscience of the world can be fully awakened. That is why we are insisting, if the House agrees to the motion, not merely on contributions but on an effort to awaken the conscience of the world. Therefore, I appeal as strongly as I can, in the name of Christian civilisation and in the name of the traditional Irish sympathy for oppressed people, to act firmly and clearly and promptly in this matter. Obviously, many difficulties and problems are involved. The South African Government will say: "This is interference in domestic matters and does not come under the Charter of the United Nations." Another argument the South African Government will use is: "Equally abominable things are being done elsewhere in Africa, why do you not send your Commission there?" We know that kind of argument. It is like: "Other people are committing other sins so why cannot we commit our sins?" We had something like that on the censorship debate this afternoon. The plain and compelling fact is that until we in Ireland or some other country which upholds human freedom initiates some such effort to relieve these thousands of sufferers, members of a majority persecuted and oppressed by a minority, until we take those steps we are betraying the basic principles of Irish nationality and of Christian humanity.
We are all inclined—it is a very easy thing to do—to condemn those who condone the awful Nazi persecutions in the late 1930s and 1940s. It is very easy for us to do that now. In fact, what we are virtually doing at the moment is condoning this state of affairs in South Africa by not interfering. How can we in the one breath condemn the Nazis and in another breath say: "The South African Government have their own way of dealing with things. We had better let them be."
There is much more that I could, and perhaps should, say on this topic but there are other speakers following me. I shall simply end by thanking the Minister for what he has already done to oppose the injustices by the South African Government and to relieve the victims of abominations. But I do urge him with all the earnestness that I can command to go on to more radical measures than mere contributions, to measures that will strike at the root cause of this evil. Every week we delay means another week of agony and degradation. That, I think, is the worst thing of all. Many of us here could probably endure direct torture up to a point but when one's human dignity, one's human self-respect, is deliberately broken down, then I think the end would come for most of us. That is the worst thing. We read of terrible persecutions on both sides in the religious controversies in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries but they did not try to destroy the human soul or break down the human personality. That is what these South African jailers are trying to do. Therefore, I appeal to the Minister to act quickly and to act resolutely.