Solidarity with Ukraine must not mean abandoning neutrality or supporting NATO, but rejecting all warmongering and imperialism
Following the address by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, to the Oireachtas, Richard Boyd Barrett TD for People Before Profit, who spoke at the debate, says:
“The world must condemn and demand accountability for the horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by Vladamir Putin’s forces in Ukraine.
“The people of Ukraine are the victims of a barbaric and unjustified imperialist invasion. Russia must end this bloody invasion and allow the people of Ukraine to determine their own future.
“However, we reject, completely the attempts by the current government to use the crisis in Ukraine as an excuse to abandon Ireland’s military neutrality or to move Ireland closer to the NATO military alliance, and we reject any idea that further escalation of this war through increased NATO involvement would be anything other than a disaster- threatening a wider European war and even nuclear conflict.
“We also reject the call for further sanctions which, we fear will impoverish ordinary Russian people and weaken their anti-war opposition to Putin.
“Ireland’s tradition of neutrality means precisely standing against all warmongers and empires and standing with the oppressed of the world, whether they are the victims of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Chechnya or Georgia, or whether they are the victims of US, western aggression or that of their allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine or Yemen.
“Putin is without question guilty of war crimes and a criminal unjustified invasion and the power’s that dominate NATO, most notably the US and UK, are also guilty of war crimes in their bloody and unjustified wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“They along with other western powers continue to arm and support regimes such as Israel, who most recently have been indicted by Amnesty International and Human Rights watch for decades of apartheid and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people.
“The US, UK and France are also directly involved in arming and supporting the murderous war and crimes of the Saudi dictatorship in Yemen which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and brought the country to the brink of famine.
“We can have no credibility in condemning war crimes, militarism or despotism in one place while ignoring it or worse supporting it in other places.
“Neutrality also means being willing to honestly criticise. We believe it is a wrong and dangerous decision of President Zelenskyy’s government to recently ban many of the Ukrainian opposition parties, or to publicly identify with the state of Israel when it is being indicted by the most respected human rights organisations in the world for crimes against humanity.
“We will not eliminate war crimes, warmongering and despotism with double standards or by condemning the crimes of some but not others. Neutrality means being consistent in opposing all war crimes, despotism and violations of human rights.”