Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-10-Speech-3-175"
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"en.20020410.5.3-175"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I, on the other hand, do not welcome Commissioner Nielson. I do not know why he is here; China would not appear to be part of his remit. In my opinion, Commissioner Nielson concerns himself too often with things which are none of his business – and I think he understands what I am trying to say – and so I do not know what he might have to contribute in this area.
Ladies and gentlemen, on the subject of this report, I want to say that, two hours ago, we adopted a document which is extremely critical of Israel and regarding which there were opposing positions in the House. I voted against this document and I saw that, when it wants to, Parliament is capable of raising its voice. Two hours later, Mr President, we are presented with a document on China, a country with 1.2 billion inhabitants which oppresses hundreds of millions of people, ethnic and cultural minorities and ordinary citizens who are advocates of freedom and democracy, yet Parliament is incapable of doing more than – in point 10 – timidly raising the issue of human rights, after making complimentary comments about China and its development, referring to trade with the European Union, of course.
We do not support this. We radicals condemn this approach, we condemn these double standards of the European Parliament, which is ‘forceful’ or tries to be forceful with those who are in a position of weakness, as Israel is now, under attack from a ferocious terrorism which, again this morning – and nobody has mentioned the fact – caused at least eight deaths, the deaths of innocent people, of course, in an Israeli bus, and then, the same day, expresses its satisfaction with the dictatorial Chinese regime which is oppressing hundreds of millions of people, rewarding it with a blank cheque. We condemn this behaviour.
We feel that Europe will only become great when it succeeds in adopting an unambiguous attitude towards human rights, the rights of individuals and the rights of minorities, and so we will not vote for a text which has been described as hypocritical, a view I share. There are parts of the text such as the section relating to Taiwan which we support, but we reject the overall line it takes. We feel that the message Parliament and the European Union send to that country should be very different."@en1
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