In the interview Minister Bruton cited the building of the World Cup stadiums as an example of ‘progress and growth’. Workers building the World Cup stadiums in Qatar are facing shocking conditions. Amnesty International has published evidence showing that as many as 4,000 workers will die building the stadiums. Workers are employed under a brutal work regime, with long hours, dangerous conditions and low pay.
Minister Bruton stated that it is an ‘exciting time’ and an ‘exciting marketplace’ in Qatar, does Minister Bruton think that the migrant workers in Qatar that are facing slave like conditions would also find it an ‘exciting time’?
Minister Bruton’s ignorant comments on Qatar stadiums shows he regards dead migrant workers as ‘non people’. If it was Irish workers facing these conditions and dropping dead there would be rightly an uproar.
Minister Bruton disgracefully defends the government’s silence on gross human rights abuses by saying that trade is not linked with human rights and that the mission is solely concerned with dealing with companies. But who are these companies? They are the very same companies that engaged in this modern slave driving.
Minister Bruton continually stated that this mission was not the appropriate forum to raise human rights issues. However this position of separating trade from human rights is contrary to the EU’s legal commitment to Policy Coherence for Development. This approach is in effect putting Ireland’s trade policy firmly in the camp the fundamentalist free trade hawks.
Related Posts
#RepealTheSeal: The Mother & Baby Homes archive scandal
The government decision to seal the Mother and Baby Homes archives for 30 years has been met with huge backlash from working-class communities. The move to seal the documents for three decades, despite survivors concerns, can be regarded as another form of abuse on working-class women – with survivors noting that for those impacted “consent was taken from them when they were in institutions, and was being taken away again”.
Begg’s support for Property Tax makes mockery of ICTU’s alleged opposition to austerity
On RTE radio’s This Week Programme today the general secretary of ICTU David Begg voiced support for the…
Irish capitalist state responsible for church terror
From the 1943 Cavan Fire in which 35 children and one adult perished after nuns refused to let…
Bryan Dobson ‘idiots’ comment underlines RTE’s lack of impartiality
By Paul Murphy MEP, Bryan Dobson’s reference to peaceful protesters, live on national television, as ‘idiots’ was an…