Dublin MEP Clare Daly dismisses China’s Uyghur genocide accusations

Rory Fleming

The Irish politician has labelled accusations of genocide as “complete and utter nonsense”.

Dublin MEP Clare Daly has dismissed claims that the Chinese government is undertaking a genocide on its Uyghur Muslim population in the Northern region of Xinjiang.

Ms. Daly made the comments whilst appearing on China’s official state news agency.

The Irish MEP has been outspoken on a number of issues in the past, such as her contentious stance on Nicaragua’s human rights violations and her views on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Irish MEP’s Clare Daly and Mick Wallace have deviated significantly from prevailing opinions on a number of issues such as Covid-19 and Ukraine. (Credit: Rolling News)

Alongside fellow MEP Mick Wallace, Ms. Daly has also called into question the use of vaccination certificates and praised Venezuela’s President of the National Assembly Jorge Rodriguez despite claims of election tampering.

In the former Fingal TD’s latest brush with controversy, the 55-year-old has backed the Chinese communist party, describing accusations of genocide against its Uyghur population as like “a lot of biased opinions pushed by the western media”.

Many western nations such as the United States, United Kingdom and the Netherlands have all accused China of inflicting this genocide on the near-12 million-strong Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang region.

The claims include the mass sterilisation of Uyghur women, moving thousands to forced labour camps and attempting to break the groups’ religious and cultural traditions.

Protests have occurred across the globe in relation the alleged genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China. (Credit: Getty Images)

However, despite a UN report which stated that up to 1 million people were being detained by the Chinese government in 2018, Ms. Daly has declared her belief that these reports are falsehoods.

“I don’t claim to be an authority, but I do know that words like genocide and so on are complete and utter nonsense. And if they were, why is the Uyghir population growing. So if it is, you (China) are very bad at genocide when the population you’re supposed to be targeting are growing and getting bigger, so that’s a nonsense clearly”.

The Dublin MEP went on to encourage those within the west who harboured concerns over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population, to visit the country themselves to gain a first-hand perspective on the matter.

“Yes it would be lovely to go back and see all of these areas for ourselves and again we will certainly be encouraging anyone who is in a position in Europe to travel and to come here and experience your beautiful country and to come and see for themselves. Anybody who has concerns, go there and see it.”

Clare Daly has been sympathetic to both China and Russia in recent times. (Credit: Getty Images)

Concluding her interview with Chinese state media, Ms. Daly compared the genocide accusations levelled at China as comparable to the Nordstream 2 pipeline accusations which have been made against Russia.

Ms. Daly, who has called Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “clearly defensive” and voted against a resolution to condemn the nation for its invasion of Ukraine, sees similarities in how both Russia and China are being covered by western outlets.

“Its beginning to sound to me now a little bit like Nordstream, they don’t want to see because they probably know what they’ll see when they get there is not the lie that they have put out there”, Ms. Daly said.

In the past, the Chinese Ambassador to Ireland, He Xiangdong, has echoed Ms. Daly’s sentiments, stating that videos and images which purport to show Uyghur concentration camps are in fact “fabricated”.

Related Articles:

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge