Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-13-Speech-4-183"
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"en.20011213.12.4-183"2
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"Mr President, it may sometimes be necessary to take more time to say less. Still, I must say what I had planned to say. We attach great importance to this. I would add that the activities of Parliament on matters such as this are important in themselves and also important to the way in which Europe is perceived both by Europeans and globally.
The General Affairs Council, in the conclusions of its October meeting, called for the release of all remaining political prisoners in Burma including Aung San Suu Kyi. The Commission strongly supported – and continues to support – that call. It was ten years ago last Saturday that Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She is a past winner, of course, of the Sakharov Prize. She remains, today, a formidably powerful symbol of the principles those prizes represent, as she did before – an inspiration to her own people and to the world at large. I know how much support she enjoys in this House, support with which I want strongly to associate myself.
It is a measure of both her courage and her commitment to non-violent action that Aung San Suu Kyi has decided to remain in her country under detention and to engage in discussions with the authorities responsible for that detention in order to pursue her goal of establishing democracy in her country.
Her persistence, her passion and her wisdom have been instrumental in the positive developments that have occurred in Burma over the last year, even though it must be recalled that these developments are only the beginning of a process which needs to be further deepened and to evolve into a constructive and more concrete dialogue based on respect for internationally accepted standards of human rights.
Therefore, while we salute Aung San Suu Kyi and assure her of our continued admiration and support, we also encourage the government to pursue this groundbreaking dialogue actively. We have already underlined the readiness of the European Union to consider positive measures in response to concrete results from the present talks. But we need to see these results, not least the early release of the many hundreds of political prisoners still held in Burmese jails.
The case of Leyla Zana is very well known to the Commission, as stated in several Regular Reports on Turkey. The case has been a cause for concern raised with the Turkish authorities on many occasions. The Commission is aware that the case of Mrs Zana has been discussed many times at the European Parliament and has recently received renewed attention in the framework of the EP report on Turkey as well as during the EC-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee recently held in November.
The Commission welcomes the renewed attention of the European Parliament to this case. In this context, as stated in the Regular Report for Turkey 2001, the Commission expects that Turkey will observe the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights of 17 July 2001 on the absence of a fair trial in this case. This would be a significant step by Turkey with respect to the actual implementation of the recent constitutional amendments whereby the right to a fair trial was explicitly guaranteed."@en1
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