This matter relates to Ireland's relationship with China in a human rights context. I fully appreciate the trade opportunities available in growing China and that it is very much the land of opportunity for foreign businesses. I appreciate also that China is a major economic player and that improving our relationship with the Chinese Government is a key plank of the Government's overall economic strategy. However, while China is very much open for business to the outside world, it is also home to some of the gravest human rights abuses in the world.
It has been well documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Falun Gong and other groups that China is home to arbitrary imprisonment without charge or trial and that hundreds of human rights lawyers and political opponents of the regime have been imprisoned or locked away from their families. The Chinese Government recently admitted that China's most prominent human rights lawyer had been in detention for the previous year and that his family had not been notified where he was. There has been widespread persecution of religious groups and minorities, in particular during the past ten to 15 years with the repression of Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners, many of whom are active in Ireland, have been routinely subjected to arrest and to what the Chinese call "re-education", namely, sending people to labour camps where they are tortured, with women threatened and subjected to sexual assault in an effort to force re-education on them. Organ harvesting is now also an issue. It has been stated that some members of the Falun Gong organisation have had their organs harvested.
I appreciate that there are different schools of thought in regard to how the western world should engage with countries like China. I studied international relations at college and appreciate that many people would say that the best way to deal with these countries is to engage with them and that over time, as they become more economically progressive, they will come to respect political and civil rights and discontinue repression of their people. However, like other countries, we have been working with the Chinese Government during the past ten years in particular, and, if anything, the evidence is that things from a political point of view are getting worse rather than better. I acknowledge there has been huge economic progress but evidence is that political repression is worsening. In the wake of the Arab spring last year, there was a greater crack down on opponents within China.
I recognise the economic context of the Government's engagement with China. However, Ireland has a proud history of raising human rights issues even when difficult to do so. As chair of the OSCE and in the context of our holding the EU Presidency next year, we have a responsibility to use our voice on this issue. We have done so previously when the Chinese premier was here ten years ago, at which time I was a student union officer in Trinity and one of our students, Ming Zhao, had been arrested in China for taking part in Falun Gong and was detained in a labour camp for two years. The Government raised the case with the Chinese premier when here and Ming was subsequently released.
During the recent visit of the Vice President of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Xi Jinping, Ming said: "Words are very powerful" ... "And my release was proof that a small country like Ireland can make a difference." I ask that the Minister, in his continued engagement with the Chinese Government on economic matters, ensures we do not lose our soul. While undoubtedly there are economic opportunities for us in engaging with China, they should not come at the cost of silence. Perhaps the Minister of State will say if the Government raised the ongoing human rights violations with the Chinese regime during the recent visit of Vice President Xi Jinping to Ireland, whether these issues were raised during the State visit to China, whether they have been raised in general bilateral relations with China and if the Government has raised them at European level.
