Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-10-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20020410.1.3-019"2
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"Mr President, while Chancellor Schröder and President Putin sit down together today in Weimar and do business as though there were nothing wrong, a secret genocide is taking place in Chechnya. I use the word genocide advisedly because this is precisely what has been happening in Chechnya in recent years: a fifth of the population has been driven out of the country, tens of thousands have been systematically murdered, and there is no end to the killing! These are not isolated violations of human rights or one-off attacks. They are systematic. It began with one of the bloodiest, if not the very bloodiest election campaign in the history of mankind, the election campaign which President Putin was fighting when he unleashed this war in Chechnya. At that time his purpose was not to fight terrorism. It was to sweep away a democratic, though – as it is quite clear in this region – extremely unsatisfactory, regime which had been elected under the supervision of the OSCE, and to appoint his own governors. I find it rather grotesque that we should now be asking these same governors to investigate their own misdemeanours.
It has to be our task to make this issue an international concern and finally to expose it to the glare of world publicity. That is why I am grateful to Hans-Gert Poettering and all those who overcame considerable resistance to enable this Parliament today to devote peak debating time to these really dreadful violations of international law and human rights and to this genocide, and finally to make it clear that it is not acceptable for a high-level EU delegation to travel to the Middle East and try to reach Mr Arafat while at the same time saying that they cannot travel to Chechnya because it is not possible or because permission would not be granted. We cannot let a partner country like Russia get away with systematically isolating an area like this where such brutal violations of human rights are taking place, with closing it to journalists, to observers and to humanitarian organisations. We must not stand for this any longer. That is why I also agree that the Commissioner must go there, the troika must go there and the parliamentary delegation must go there. We are all prepared to support this proposal.
I have to say quite clearly that we must also take the opportunity in September to discuss the situation in Chechnya with the Council of Europe and the elected head of the Chechen Government – of whom the motion unfortunately makes no mention – and to work towards a political solution. We have to remember one thing: courageous journalists, such as Thomas Avenarius of the
or his colleague from the
have risked their lives to fight their way into the country. Around 4 March alone, they personally documented five systematic acts of terrorism involving numerous murders in five places in Chechnya. It is Russian human rights activists, such as those from the organisation
who have risked their lives to go there and document the existence of death squads, set up by Russia's military secret service in Chechnya. These are facts which we finally need to take seriously! We have cases of villages allegedly being cleansed 33 times – and another place 27 times – with around a seventh of the population being killed each time. Civilians, including pregnant women, were pulled out of minibuses and shot. This is not a war on terrorism. Suspected terrorists were shot in their slippers. I really must make it clear that the public is being systematically fed disinformation if the impression is being given that this is simply a rather overblown war on terrorism, quite apart from the fact that this is not how to fight terrorism, but at best how to produce terrorists, and here I must echo what Olivier Dupuis said, that so far there is not a shred of evidence to show that large-scale Chechen terrorism even exists.
As far as the assassinations in Russia are concerned, even the highly respected
has stated quite clearly that there is not even a scrap of circumstantial evidence to show that it was Chechens who were responsible, and the
thinks that we are dealing here with rather dubious circumstances and quite different people pulling strings. This also needs to be stated openly in this Parliament: we have a long tradition of issuing many clear statements on Chechnya. We have put ourselves at the forefront of those who finally wish to ensure that light is shed on this policy of systematically suppressing a people for the sake of oil and other raw materials.
This is a colonial war at the beginning of the twenty-first century and nothing else! We have every right to oppose this colonial war. We have a special partnership with Russia. We are both members of the OSCE. We are both members of the Council of Europe. We have the means to take action, but we must finally use them. We must stop sleepwalking and acting as though these were isolated incidents. The few officers who have already been brought before the courts or charged, such as an officer who raped and murdered a young woman in the year 2000, a colonel, have not yet been sentenced. This is all propaganda. No one is investigating these crimes. We must not stand for this any longer! We must spell this out to Russia, because it is an important partner which we take seriously."@en1
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"Memorial"1
"Neue Züricher Zeitung"1
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