Senator Norris's Private Members Motion - Ethical Foreign Policy - 28th March 2007

Senator Norris’s Private Members Motion – Ethical Foreign Policy – 28th March 2007

Mr. Norris: I move:
That Seanad Éireann calls on the Government to develop and implement an ethical foreign policy.
I find it interesting that the Government has amended this motion in a manner that goes right to the nub of the issue. It is clear that in bypassing any mention of ethics, the Government acknowledges its guilt in this area and it is notable that there is no Minister from the Department of Foreign Affairs to hear this motion. The reference to the values of the people is a calculated insult of the type delivered by the late Mr. Charles Haughey when he announced his equivocal half-measure on contraception, describing it as an Irish solution for an Irish people.
In requesting the Government to develop and implement an ethical foreign policy, I recognise that I am asking for a lot. Despite some gestures in this regard, notably by Mr. Robin Cook in Britain which fizzled out after the discovery of the export of Hawk aircraft to Indonesia for use in the military oppression of the people of East Timor and a few fitful outbreaks of conscience in our Department of Foreign Affairs under the leadership of Mr. Frank Aiken, Mr. Dick Spring and Mr. David Andrews, such a policy has nowhere been given a substantial trial. This is because, owing to the weakness of human motivation, perceived self-interest almost invariably conquers and it is frequently expressed in economic terms.
Finance plays a major role in this matter and I welcome the fact that the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Conor Lenihan, indicated at a meeting I arranged with the Darfur investment group that it is the Government's intention to direct agencies such as the National Pensions Reserve Fund to ensure investments on behalf of the State are ethical. This area will be addressed more fully by my colleague, Senator Brendan Ryan.
Genuine altruism is rare, even in individuals, and levels of cynicism seem to exist in direct relationship with political seniority and closeness to our possession of power. The higher one goes, the fewer the principles. The historian, Edward Gibbon, said the Emperor Marcus Aurelius was almost unique among rulers in that his overriding concern was not self-advancement but the welfare of his people. This ideal must, in the 21st century, be extended from a national or imperial base to a global one. I am asking that Ireland, as a country, follow the example of the noble Roman.
At this point in the discussion I am usually reminded by people on the other side of realpolitik and national self-interest, so let me repeat a story I have told on a number of occasions in this House. When the then Government proposed to sell beef to the army of Saddam Hussein, I was one of a limited number of people in political life who opposed the transaction. For my pains I was lectured from across the House by the Government spokesman on foreign affairs who said that, while what I was suggesting might be the moral thing to do, could Ireland afford it? Within a short space of time there was an outbreak of war in the region, financial arrangements collapsed, Saddam Hussein welshed on the deal and the Irish taxpayer was burdened not only with the £100 million owed by the Iraqi regime for the beef but was also awarded the privilege of paying hefty sums to that very pragmatic cattle dealer, Mr. Larry Goodman.

We, therefore, did the immoral thing and paid through the nose for it. My point is that although there may appear to be economic inconvenience in the short to medium term, in the long term decency and moral standards pay off. As the Bible states: "Cast your bread upon the waters and it shall return to you an hundred fold."
Let us stay with Iraq for a while and witness the unholy contortions of the Government in maintaining a morally bankrupt policy of subservience to the criminal Administration of George Bush, no matter whither it leads. When 100,000 people marched in the streets of Dublin against the war, the Taoiseach claimed they were agreeing with him. This may be open to doubt but it is surely incontrovertible that the overwhelming mass of Irish people wish to disassociate themselves from the way in which the Taoiseach, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Government have connived in the deliberate employment of torture as an instrument of policy by the US Administration. The two Aherns, Bertie and Dermot, claim that Condoleezza Rice gave them a clear assurance in the matter of torture. While this may be the case, she did not provide the assurance Bertie and Dermot passed on to the Irish people. She clearly indicated that the US Administration was committed to the use of torture and openly acknowledged that even at Guantanamo Bay, a place whose exact location and function we at least know, unlike the unspecified torture sites in eastern Europe, procedures include hooding, sleep deprivation and the use of white noise.
The Taoiseach's memory is selective but even he can hardly have forgotten that our Government successfully sued the United Kingdom Government when it engaged in these practices at Castlereagh police station in the North and won a judgment which made it perfectly clear that in the view of the European Court of Human Rights, a view our Government enthusiastically accepted at the time, these practices constituted torture. When Condoleezza Rice told our Government that hooding, white noise and sleep deprivation were employed in Guantanamo Bay, she was clearly admitting the use of torture. Moreover, the commitment to torture of Bush and his cronies was made perfectly explicit in the morally disgraceful and ethically unjustifiable attempts made to force a measure through Congress facilitating and legalising torture, including methods not seen since the Gestapo left the Avenue Foch.
Neither was our collaboration merely verbal given that we actively collaborated with the use of Shannon Airport for the purpose of extraordinary rendition, a foul practice in which civilians are kidnapped, bundled into aeroplanes, drugged, shackled and delivered to countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria where torture is routinely practised in a manner that has occasionally led to hypocritical protests from both Britain and the United States. This practice is carried out secretly. However, in recent years, using information concerning aeroplane registration, flight patterns, etc., supplied to me by gallant people at Shannon Airport such as Ed Horgan and Tim Hourigan, I have sought to make these matters public through debate in the House and by other means.
All these matters were a by-product of George W. Bush's military adventure in the Middle East. The war in Iraq was fought clearly for logistical and economic advantage, especially in the interests of multinational corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton with which the eminence grise of the American Administration, Dick Cheney, has close and very unhealthy ties. This has happened before.
What was novel, however, about the Bush Administration's ill-advised and barbarous attack was not only its hypocrisy but also that it came as part of a package which included the deliberate undermining of international humanitarian protection such as the Geneva Convention and the institution of the United Nations. Led by the extreme right, the United States Government deliberately corrupted every standard of decency and legality for which the West has stood. Habeas corpus flies out the window and instead of flinging back in their faces the lies propounded by the stumbling and inadequate Bush and his sidekick, the unspeakable automaton, Ms. Condoleezza Rice, the Aherns, Bertie and Dermot, grovellingly accept every humiliating fiction they are fed with the alacrity one would expect of a flea-ridden poodle with piles accepting a rubber cushion from the hands of its master.

An Cathaoirleach: The Senator should refer to the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs by their proper titles.

Mr. Norris: I will use their titles but all the other language I have used when referring to them stands.
Through all of this, the corruption of language is a significant and telling factor. In a revealing moment the Lady Macbeth of the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice, described the horrendous bloodbath that followed the Israeli assault upon Lebanon as "the birth pangs of a new democracy". As I indicated, under the Bush Administration the West has descended to values not seen since Adolf Hitler, but people are afraid to squeak. Even under Hitler, however, brave individuals were doing important work. I think, in particular, of the late Victor Klemperer, a cousin of the great and distinguished conductor, Otto Klemperer. He used his time in seclusion during the Nazi tyranny to compile an academic analysis of the linguistic system employed by the Third Reich.
Language is important and I invite Senators to examine for a moment some of the language employed. "Shock and awe", the description of the initial barrage of bombing against the civilian population of Baghdad, could easily be translated as "Blitzkrieg". "Shake and bake" is the euphemism used to conceal the illegal use of white phosphorus against personnel by the United States Army in Falluja. "Extraordinary rendition" is another euphemism employed to cover the nasty reality of kidnap and torture.
We need a Victor Klemperer in our universities to conduct an analysis of the way in which the Bush Administration has abused language to perpetuate tyranny. I hope this may be done and believe it will be, for although it has taken a long time, there are signs that a corrective is being applied, even within the American system. Seventy percent of the American people are now against the war, making it clear that those of us who consistently opposed the war and were accused of anti-Americanism for our pains were the most pro-American of all.
In response to allegations about Ireland's involvement in extraordinary rendition, the Government has consistently obfuscated and lied. In the two reports produced and adopted on this issue, one by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the second by the European Parliament, the Minister for Foreign Affairs did not answer clear questions which were put to him. Instead, as he had done in this House and consistently to the press, he insisted upon answering questions he had not been asked.
I defy any person to point to one instance where I or any of the others leading the charge in this matter claimed that torture victims were transported through Shannon Airport on their way to torture centres, yet this is what the Minister consistently denies. Why does he deny something which has not been said? The reason is that he cannot answer the charges made and the charge I and others have made, namely, that the fact this country collaborated with the United States by assisting aeroplanes on the return leg of their villainous and shameful journey is incontrovertibly true.
The torture circuit is an unbroken line in which Ireland has played a mean, cowardly and disgusting role. To give one example, on 17 February 2003, an Egyptian citizen who had been granted asylum in Italy, Abu Omar, was violently abducted in broad daylight in the Via Guerzoni in Milan. The incident was witnessed by various civilians, including a woman called Rezk Merfat who saw the terrified Abu Omar being jumped on, struggling and crying for help and being forced into a van. Abu Omar was then taken to the American airbase at Aviano where he was flown a short distance, put into another aeroplane with United States markings which delivered him to Cairo. This, according to legal documents, is what happened to him:
The first measure was to leave him in a room where incredibly loud and unbearable noise was made ... he has experienced damage to his hearing. The second kind of torture was to place him in a sauna at tremendous temperature and straight afterwards to put him in a cold store room ... occasioning terrible pain to his bones ... as if they were cracking. The third was to hang him upside down ... and apply live wires to give electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body including his genitals. He has suffered damage to his motory and urinary systems ... he became incontinent.
He was tortured for a further seven months and has never been charged with any offence. However, on the return journey to the United States from Cairo, as part of the torture circuit, on the following day, 18 February, the Gulfstream jet stopped off to be refuelled at Shannon Airport. No protest has ever been made at this gross violation of international and Irish law by a so-called friendly government. This has all been done because of the Irish Government's gutlessness in the face of American capital.
I have mentioned the late Frank Aiken. How horrified he would be at the queasy way in which we have attempted, without recourse to either the sovereign Parliament of Ireland or the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, to shift our firm position that Tibet was a separate and sovereign country. We have also said little about organ harvesting, an appalling practice about which my colleague, Senator O'Toole, will speak. Again, money is the reason for these developments.
Let us examine the situation in the Middle East. There has been a systematic violation by the Israeli Government of the most basic human rights of the Palestinian people. We know full well that in the external association agreement between the European Union and the state of Israel, there are attached to this treaty important human rights clauses. However, we have done nothing to assert these clauses and even my modest proposal that the Government should support the establishment of a monitoring group to oversee the human rights situation in the occupied territories has not been pursued by the Government. Once more, United States pressure, the influence of American money and the perceived threat to jobs financed here by US multinationals has, I suspect, played its role.
In the past various Government's have taken up decent and moral positions on certain issues. However, sadly, on most occasions it has had to be shamed into this by the action of courageous individuals such as the Dunnes Stores strikers and Tom Hyland, whose heroic defence of the people of East Timor is well known to this House. I admired the staunchness of the late Mr. Haughey when he refused to support Margaret Thatcher in her Falklands War adventure.
What we need is an understanding of the position announced by the former Senator and President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, in her work on ethical globalisation. We need to understand that this small and fragile planet is threatened not just environmentally but politically by the pursuit of narrow selfish and sectional interest and the failure to date of any major state to attempt to establish an ethical foreign policy. Sadly, the Government has in its amendment made it clear it has no intention of supporting these standards.


Mr. Norris: I thank all my colleagues who took part in this debate. It is a pity the Minister paid such a flying visit. I wish he had been here to listen to some of my comments and tried to answer them. He simply obfuscated. Questions were not answered, which was extremely disappointing.
I contrast this with the refreshingly honest, though sadly short, speech of Senator Mansergh because he understood exactly what I was getting at and said clearly and directly that what he felt was necessary for this country and others was a kind of realpolitik. Did I hear a slight variation? Was it echtpolitik? I thought he might have made that little distinction, which would, no doubt, be lost on many of our listeners. Senator Mansergh argued that its aim was to pursue the interests of the State.

Dr. Mansergh: And ideals.

Mr. Norris: Yes, but the interests came first. Senator Mansergh did not put the ideals first, which is very telling. That is a position. It is a very old-fashioned 19th-century position. In a world that is globalised, it is no longer relevant. It is the one thing that will get us into trouble. At least, that is my opinion. However, Senator Mansergh was honest and open and dealt with it.
If, by realpolitik, he means we must talk to people we do not particularly respect or admire, he is right. Certainly, in respect of the Middle East, I would be far closer to his analysis than that of my friend and colleague, Senator Quinn. It is astonishing that we should talk about balance and not realise that it is quite the opposite direction to that suggested by Senator Quinn. The balance is against the unfortunate Palestinians who have been hammered into the ground. Look at the language used. When half the Members of the Palestinian Parliament is snatched and kidnapped, we are told they are detained. When two soldiers in a war situation are taken, they are kidnapped. There is no balance. Funds are being illegally kept away from a legitimate government. It may be regrettable, but it was elected. Do we believe in democracy? Not, it seems, when it comes to the Palestinians.
I was one of those who were crucially involved in the establishment of the first Israeli embassy here and have supported and continue to support the State of Israel, but I will not support any government, however close to it I am, that violates human rights. I have said the same about the British Government in respect of the appalling vista. It is time we grew up and faced these things. If the British Government was involved and implicated in bombings and so on, we must know about it to ensure it never happens again.
I have visited places like Twane and Susea, which are little villages around south Hebron where I am glad to say my former partner, Ezra Yitzrak, whose life is under threat from American settlers, has worked. It sickens me when I hear these people with twangy American voices speak as spokespersons for the Israeli Government and deny the rights of people who have been there for 500, 1,000 and 1,500 years. I have seen what has happened there. I know I will lose votes for saying it, but I will never stop doing so because I do not believe just in Jewish rights, Christian rights or Muslim rights. I believe in human rights for all people.
I am involved in a situation where a small town was demolished and a settlement built on it. This is in the occupied territories and I remind Senator Quinn that it is an occupation. It has been determined to be an occupation under international law and there is no getting away from that. It is also an illegal occupation. In that area, they moved the people out, built their settlement on top of it and employed the Arabs who were displaced to build the houses of their oppressors. Now that the work is finished, they are demolishing the poor, unfortunate makeshift shacks and hovels they have and depriving them of the most basic levels of sanitation and health care. I consider that an outrage and have a video of this incident which I will show to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs.

[Mr. Norris]
As someone who is so moved about the Holocaust, it shocks me to see young Israeli soldiers - men and women - laughing, sneering and ridiculing elderly and infirm people as the bulldozers smashed down their pathetic little dwellings. That is not moral, it is disgusting. There is an apartheid system in Israel at the moment, with the development of ghettos. I know that angers my Jewish friends and so it should. It is not the word that should anger them, however, but the reality on the ground that I have seen. It has shamed me and I honour those people like Ezra who stand up against it. I also honour the 19 air force pilots who refused to bomb the occupied territories because it was against international law.
We had an appalling exhibition by the Minister who did not do me the courtesy of coming in and listening to what I had to say. He obfuscated again and answered questions that had not been asked. We know that airplanes were refuelled. Senator White made a reasonable point that perhaps they stopped because of pressure from us. The Minister said we have a great foreign policy and that our approach to Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma is not motivated by self interest. Of course it is not - we do not have any interests there, so it is easy to say that.
We know they use torture, including water-boarding, and Condoleezza Rice has admitted it. I want the House to listen to a description of water-boarding from an American practitioner who eventually decided to give up this horrible practice. I remind the House that torture is defined by the United Nations as follows: "Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession". This is what the man who practised water-boarding had to say about it:
Water-boarding is a torture, period. I ran a water-board team and administered dozens of students through the process as a tool to show what the worst looks like, short of death. This is why there is a doctor and psychologist standing right next to the student - to do it safe and help the student recover. It is not a simulation. When applied you are in fact drowning at a controlled rate. We just determine how much and how long you'll break. Everyone breaks.

Mr. Lydon: It has nothing to do with foreign policy.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach: Senator Norris is out of time.

Mr. Norris: Fine but I am going to make a final point. We have recently seen this business of the Australian, David Hicks, confessing. Is it any surprise, since he spent five years under these conditions? I have his description of what happened. He had to lie on the floor with very few clothes, the air-conditioning is kept on full so he shivers all the time. He said to another detainee-----

Mr. Mooney: This has nothing to do with foreign policy.

Mr. Norris: The Senator should shut up. He was laughing earlier on and distracting people.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach: Senator Norris, please.

Mr. Mooney: It has nothing to do with this.

Mr. Norris: Just listen to this. Hicks said to another detainee: "When you get out of here, please tell people my sanity is at risk".

Mr. Lydon: This has absolutely nothing to do with Irish foreign policy.

Mr. Norris: He was attempting to commit suicide. Is it any wonder that he changed his mind?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach: Senator Norris is out of time.

Mr. Mooney: It had nothing to do with me. That is very unfair.

Mr. Norris: I did not say the Senator was laughing at me.

Mr. Mooney: It has nothing to do with foreign policy.