Left selects its downtrodden in scramble for high moral ground

There’s a distinct whiff of hypocrisy from critics of Saudi Arabia’s wretched record on women’s rights, writes Eilis O’Hanlon

‘FULL equality” was the cry last week as Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald launched the new National Strategy for Women and Girls.

Well, not voting Saudi Arabia on to the UN Commission on the Status of Women would have been a good start.

Of course, it’s impossible to say for certain that Ireland did give the nod to the Saudis, because the Government refuses either to confirm or deny it. However, the autocratic kingdom secured the backing of 47 out of 54 members of the UN Economic and Social Council, so chances are that we were one of them, provoking consternation from the opposition, and even semi-detached Independent Alliance members of the Government.

If we did give the nod to one of the world’s worst abusers of women to pose as their champions instead, it’s only because the Government thought no one would really care; and most times they would have been proved right.

When it comes to women’s diminished status in Islamic countries, most of those who organise angry marches here whenever a man so much as looks sideways at a woman tend to fall mysteriously silent for fear of being called racist if they object too strongly.

Best just to say nothing and pretend that the biggest fight for women’s rights in the world today should be over whether middle-class Irish feminists get sufficient breastfeeding breaks.

This time was different, with independents, Labour and Sinn Fein leaping on the bandwagon to condemn Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women.

Cynics might say that some elements of the Irish left are only too happy to denounce mistreatment of Muslim women when it’s being perpetrated by military allies of the US; but since when was politics a matter of moral consistency?

Fianna Fail confirmed that. Darragh O’Brien, the party’s spokesman on foreign affairs and trade, told the Dail that “Saudi women are essentially treated as second-class citizens” and voting for the kingdom to join the commission would send “a very negative signal to those campaigning for equal rights”.

The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. Saudi women were treated no better during the long years that FF was in power. Arguably worse.

Women still cannot drive alone, but there are limited rights now allowing access to services without the permission of a male guardian, and there is more representation at various civic levels, including a female head of the Saudi stock exchange. Women were appointed to the advisory Shura Council for the first time in 2013; now representation stands at 20 per cent.

Is it now a feminist paradise? Don’t be silly. But it is progress, and things are certainly better than 2007, when then taoiseach Bertie Ahern led a week-long trade visit to the country, alongside current FF leader Micheal Martin, then enterprise, trade and employment minister.

Irish companies returned with valuable contracts in IT, telecoms software, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, education and construction.

The argument back then was that Saudia Arabia was a “friendly state”. It still is. So why suddenly this desire on the part of Fianna Fail to scramble up onto the moral high ground, as if human rights abuses began only when FF found itself in opposition?

In the past, FF also sent president Mary McAleese to address an Arab conference at which women were segregated behind screens. Aras an Uachtarain insisted at the time that, behind closed doors, she pressed strongly for women’s rights. That’s what Charlie Flanagan says too.

McAleese’s predecessor Mary Robinson even shook hands with dictator General Pinochet on a visit to Chile.

Mick Wallace says the people of Ireland, on whose behalf he is fond of talking, suspect that “diplomacy and trade interests have won out and human rights have lost out” in this latest decision.

But there’s a reason why the department is called Foreign Affairs and Trade. It’s because the two are intimately connected. Maybe we should ask Irish business to take an economic hit every time one of the countries with whom we trade behaves badly, but it would come at a huge price.

It’s not as if we are selling arms to the Saudis with which to bomb Yemen, as the British do; we have little power, and it’s better to use it honestly in our national interest than to behave like Belgium, which was caught out voting for the Saudis, and instantly crumbled and apologised as it became politically inconvenient. Plucky little Belgium, indeed.

“Today the UN sent a mes- sage that women’s rights can be sold out for petro-dollars and politics,” was how Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, put it; but we should not apologise for recognising that the rights which we enjoy in Ireland are underpinned by economic prosperity. Protecting jobs and incomes here at home raises an essential bulwark against infringements on freedom.

Standing up for human rights is a political duty of democracies, but international diplomacy involves supping with monsters as well as saints. Where were all these principled Irish champions of the downtrodden when, for example, Russia took its place – don’t laugh – on the UN Peacebuilding Committee?

The Counter Terrorism Committee also contains the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, where, under the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, according to Human Rights Watch, “the accumulation of power in the executive branch and erosion of human rights guarantees have enabled the government to intimidate, persecute and prosecute its critics”.

Far from condemning Venezuela, Chavez’s experiment in Marxist enforcement was cheered on by the Irish left.

Not forgetting President Higgins’s fawning tribute to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as a “giant among global leaders” who fought for freedom “for all of the oppressed and excluded peoples on the planet”.

There are good arguments for prioritising trade over ethics, or contrarily for defending human rights whatever the economic cost, but it can’t be both at the same time.

The message in Ireland, as always, seems to be that you can abuse human rights as much as you like as long as you do it from the left rather than the right. The victims of communism should be just as precious as those of Saudis.

‘It’s not as if we sell arms to the Saudis to bomb Yemen, as the UK does’