Media Statement, 8th April 2008

Ireland's backing-away from an Olympic boycott flies in the face of human rights and subverts any claim we have to a moral foreign policy.

GOAL CEO John O'Shea said

“As a former sportsman and sports journalist, I do not want to see any athlete lose out on the crowning moment of his or her career, but we cannot bury our heads in the sand and allow China brutalise its own people. Recall also how the Beijing-backed Burma junta beat Buddhist pro-democracy protestors off the streets of Rangoon last September, just as Beijing is beating and killing Buddhist demonstrators in Tibet.”

“The idea that politics and sport are separate is nonsense. This sporting event represents a once-in-a-lifetime PR bonanza for the dictatorship in Beijing, which matches its repression in China with sponsorship of brutal clients abroad: in Sudan, Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe.”

China funds and arms the genocidal Sudanese government, which has killed around 400,000 of its own people in Darfur since 2003. China buys Sudan's oil, and acts as a big brother to Khartoum at the UN Security Council, preventing non-African peacekeepers entering Darfur.

O Shea added

“400 Irish soldiers are going to eastern Chad, a dangerous and lawless region, to protect refugees from Darfur. It is truly courageous for any soldier to go to Chad, and in itself, the government's decision to send troops is commendable.”

“But if Ireland and other western trade partners of China showed more moral fibre, it could force Beijing to rein in its bloodthirsty cronies in Sudan. That would mean, of course, the Irish troops might not need to risk their lives in Chad, where Sudan and China-backed rebels see our soldiers not as peacekeepers, but as a protection force for the Chadian President.”