Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-02-Speech-2-248"
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"en.20011002.9.2-248"2
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"Mr President, the Durban Conference provided an important opportunity to condemn the phenomenon of racism and xenophobia, sending out a clear and powerful message, the need for and importance of which remain highly relevant today. The twentieth century bore witness to the most horrendous crimes committed in the name of racist doctrines which, we should bear in mind, took place in Europe, whose civilisation was the birthplace of the great declarations on rights.
The Durban Conference, however, was much more than an exercise in the duty of remembrance. Durban reminded us that the modern world has proved itself incapable of eradicating racism and xenophobia from its societies and these, even in Europe, continue to create victims and underlie violent conflicts. Unfortunately, some people have succumbed to the Manichean philosophy, lacking in any historical rigour, that gives Europe a disproportionate and over-simplified responsibility for all the evils and oppression associated with racism, such as the use of slavery.
Europe does not reject its history, neither the enlightened times nor its darker moments, but nor must it allow it to be crassly manipulated. Europe must not allow its history to become a mere settling of accounts, with the past being placed in the dock in order to exonerate the present time and conceal modern responsibilities for the persistence of the abject and anachronistic phenomenon of slavery and, more generally, of the systematic violation of fundamental rights.
Judging history with the eyes of the present is a pernicious exercise in populism that simplifies the complex and, consequently, offends the truth. Manicheism seeks to segregate fanaticism and use the whole gamut of crusades that interpret history as an endless struggle between Good and Evil. A fanatic, by definition, has no interlocutors, only enemies. History is not merely the balancing of criminal offences and civil compensation laid down in current legislation. We reject this pointless exercise.
The European Union’s political responsibility for affirming the universal values inherent to human dignity is both domestic and international because it is inherent to the most intimate raison d’être of our common project. Our collective European responsibility is expressed in the unreserved confirmation of our place in the front line of combat, by the universal affirmation of human rights and rights protecting against racism and xenophobia and in the determination to pursue and extend its constructive role on the international stage, by liberating humanity from all discrimination based on hatred, prejudice and ignorance."@en1
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