A chara, – It is distressing to read in Ruadhán Mac Cormaic’s column, “China’s role in the UN needs more scrutiny”, (November 27th) that Uighur dissidents who have come to the most important human rights body in the world – the UN Human Rights Council – have then had their names passed on, by that office, to one of the biggest human rights abusers of the world, China.
The excuse that was given in 2013 to Emma Reilly, who has shone a light on this practice, was not to “exacerbate Chinese mistrust against the UN Human Rights Office”.
Alarmingly, this echoes the excuse given by the World Health Organisation when it was tackled as to why it had ignored crucial information it had received about Covid-19 from health officials in Taiwan and why it delayed declaring the outbreak an international emergency. The response of the WHO was that it didn’t want to antagonise China as it would need to be able to go to Wuhan to try to discover the source of the infection.
China has managed to force international organisations, including the UN, to affirm its view that Taiwan is part of its territory. China brooks no criticism of its behaviour in Hong Kong or Tibet or towards its ethnic minorities, and Ireland is not immune to fear of causing any perceived offence as China is an important trading partner.
Whether countries want to sell diesel-engine cars or live pigs to China, it is worth remembering that appeasing bullies on the world stage doesn’t work. China’s growing threat of invasion of Taiwan poses an enormous danger to world peace. – Is mise,
MARY McCARRICK,
Rathgar, Dublin 6.