Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-15-Speech-4-148"
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"en.20000615.6.4-148"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we have just had a chance to speak with some young lawyers from Serbia, who gave us an impressive account of the hopeless situation in their country. So I am glad to come back to today’s subject, the complete lack of press freedom and access to information there.
The population only gets information from the subjective viewpoint of Mr Milosevic and his wife Mrs Markovic. Anyone who sees the facts as they are is treated as a traitor to the Serbian people and a NATO lackey. One of the young Serbian women told me that it is extraordinarily difficult for her to explain to her grandmother why she opposes Milosevic, as her grandmother only has her own information and experiences to go by. This means that she cannot understand why this young woman is involved in the OTPOR organisation.
We did not come to the aid of the Kosovo Albanians so that they could make the life of minorities in Kosovo hell. It also has to be said, because we do not know who the culprits are, that it cannot, of course, be ruled out some of the people responsible for these acts are possibly being infiltrated into Kosovo from Serbia as
because they simply do not want peace in Kosovo.
All of us in the European Union, and also UNMIK, must take swift action in that region now. UNMIK must ensure that there is a legal framework, so that the culprits can be caught, put behind bars and punished. But in Kosovo there is also the problem of missing Serbs, which we are all familiar with. We call on the Kosovo Albanians to speak now and to inform the Red Cross if they know anything about the whereabouts of these Serbs and people of other nationalities, so as to put an end to this uncertainty.
The few Serbs in Kosovo who want to work with the administration of course also have a problem. They are viewed as traitors by some of their own compatriots. That being the case, we must help these well intentioned Serbs to achieve some positive results, so that their cooperation is clearly of some benefit for the Serbian population. We must try to ensure greater police protection. That is why I appeal to all the Member States to send as many police officers as possible to Kosovo, in order to guarantee protection for minorities also.
We must help the independent democratic media in Serbia so that they can provide accurate information as far as possible, and so that democracy may yet blossom in Serbia. I would also like to say, however, that we naturally expect the “opposition press”, or what remains of it, to denounce the current irregularities in political leadership in the city of Belgrade, for example, which is governed by the MRS, just as much as it justifiably criticises the Milosevic regime. As long as it does not do this and is blind to other shortcomings, it is not an independent medium. I would also like to draw honourable Members’ attention to the following point: given that we are now hearing suggestions that Mr Draskovic is once again on the way to collaborating with Mr Milosevic, we have to be very careful about who we give help to.
OTPOR, the real resistance group in Serbia, which grew out of the student movement, is as at present being prevented by Milosevic from registering as an organisation. Nevertheless, this will not stop it organising demonstrations and displays of good will on the streets of Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia. Next weekend, our delegation will be travelling to Montenegro, and on Sunday will be holding talks with representatives of OTPOR and of the opposition. We will, of course, take this opportunity to sound out what scope there is for supporting them.
A contributory factor to the lack of freedom in that country is the Serbian University Law promulgated in October 1998, since when many professors have been removed from their posts. They are forbidden to give lectures and they have been removed from their posts because of allegedly inadequate qualifications. It is evident what is going on if I tell you that one of these allegedly unqualified professors is now a professor at the Universities of Saarbrücken and Berlin. I find it hard to imagine that these universities would employ unqualified Serbian professors. But, of course, they did not fit in with Milosevic’s doctrines.
On the other hand, I have to tell you – because we here do not get to know everything that you can only find out by talking with people on the spot – that the extremist nationalist politician Selesj is currently a university professor in the law faculty. You can imagine how they rate quality there!
Today’s debate is, of course, first and foremost concerned with conditions in Serbian prisons. There are over 2 000 Kosovo Albanians held in Serbian prisons, most of them since spring 1999, that is before the NATO offensive. The situation in these prisons is indescribable. The people have received no legal representation. If they are then sentenced, this happens with total disregard for the law. Let me remind you about Flora Brovina, the doctor who did nothing more than respect her professional ethics as a doctor, by helping people regardless of their nationality. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison in Serbia, in Niš. The prisons are certainly not in line with any convention, and contravene the Geneva Convention. There is horrifying torture and abuse, and the world is simply looking on.
A fortnight ago, I visited Kosovo with 12 colleagues, and that was when Kosovo Albanians gave us these 75 000 signatures. We have brought them here because we want to demonstrate the enormity and the awfulness of the situation of people who have been trying to find out for at least one and a half years where their relatives are – their fathers, their brothers or even their children. I do not think that we can simply file these 75 000 signatures away. We must attempt to at least give these people some certainty about where these missing persons are, what prisons they are in or where they met their death.
That is the picture in Serbia. In Kosovo, which we also visited, although the situation is different, there are similar problems. We went to Kosovo last year because we wanted to help the Kosovo Albanians who for ten years have suffered under an apartheid-like regime to obtain attention. The aim we are working towards now in Kosovo is to achieve peaceful coexistence between the majority Albanian population and minorities who are also entitled to live there, be they Serbs, Ashkali or Roma. I believe that we should focus our attention on ensuring that coexistence is possible there.
There were many incidents during the last few days of our visit there, and these are occurring again now. There have been murders of Serbs over the last few days. Nobody can say who committed them, but someone is responsible for the fact that a Serb – or even several Serbs – is murdered somewhere every day. We condemn these acts, indeed we condemned them on the spot, and have done so here on several occasions. We call on everyone in positions of responsibility, and now above all Kosovo Albanians, to ensure that when the occasion arises their compatriots behave in a restrained manner and prevent this sort of conduct against minorities."@en1
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