Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-23-Speech-4-176"
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"en.20031023.7.4-176"2
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"Mr President, the unfortunate people of Burundi are continuing to pay through periodic killings, through arbitrary arrests and through torture. The ethnic opposition is constantly intensified by the leaders of armed gangs, official or unofficial, that were created and supported, it must be remembered, for decades by the former Belgian colonising power and by the French tutelary power. The resolution provides a great deal of moralistic and paternalistic advice for the Burundi leadership, the leaders of the factions and its neighbours. Yet more than advice is needed, as the European powers have an overwhelming responsibility for what has happened and what is happening in Burundi, just as they have a more general responsibility for all of Africa, of which Rwanda and Burundi are to some extent the sad symbols.
They have an overwhelming responsibility for having ruined Africa through the trafficking of slaves, through colonialist pillaging and then through another form of pillaging, which continues today. While Parliament provides moralising advice, the major British, French and Belgian capitalist groups and many others continue to take their stipend, even from the poorest countries, and the little information that filters through from many parts of Africa where ethnic conflicts and mining riches go side by side show that it is very rare to find a situation where behind the local warlords there are no capitalist groups trying to get their hands on the riches the land has to offer. Rather than improving the fate of the local population, these riches are the cause of its misfortune. I am well aware that material aid, even a great deal of it, would not be enough to overcome all of the problems that are an extension of the past. However, if Europe wanted to, it could provide sufficient aid to allow the refugees to return, provide the Burundi people with acceptable housing and living conditions, and enable them to build infrastructures, hospitals and schools, thus creating jobs.
The resolution does allude to aid, in particular for the economic reconstruction of the country, but it gives much more attention to the financing of African forces working to restore and maintain peace and the despatch of a mission of European senior military officials to meet their counterparts in the Burundi regular army. Yet in neighbouring Rwanda some years ago, the presence of French senior military officials not only did not prevent the genocide but actually encouraged it and perhaps even armed the butchers. Thus, even if this resolution had some effect, it would certainly not wipe away the traces of blood that the presence of major European capital has left in Burundi and more generally in the African continent."@en1
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