Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-26-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20040226.1.4-014"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I think we need to emphasise what Mr Brie has already said to us. We are discussing a recommendation to the Council in the Council’s absence, which is itself not a good sign of the Council’s potential interest in such an important question. However, I think we are having a rich debate, certainly richer than what the press is reporting today, noting the remarks made by Mr Chirac, who seems to think Europe lacks respect for Russia.
But which Russia? The Russia of the new parliamentary elections? Elections where, as some of our fellow Members have pointed out, we have seen a virtual monopoly – even more so than in Serbia – of ‘nationalist parties’, as we say when we want to be tactful, although we know that, generally speaking, they are literally fascist parties. But we cannot say that because we are talking about Russia.
I fully agree with what a number of other Members have said: Mr Arvidsson, Mr Brie, Mr Wuori and others, who listed a number of small things that are not going right, I do not think there is much that is going right. The elections to the Russian Duma have shown that. So far as the presidential elections are concerned, we cannot speak of an election campaign because no such campaign has taken place. We all witnessed the scandal of the Rybkin affair, a candidate who was kidnapped, abducted to a foreign country, drugged and sent back. There was the scandal surrounding the candidature of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is undeniably one of Russia’s greatest entrepreneurs. We would not have tolerated one tenth of one quarter of what was done to him. I think the Strasbourg Court will be bound to agree, but sadly it will be three years before then, by which time the fate of Mr Khodorkovsky’s business and of Mr Khodorkovsky himself will have been sealed.
I have a question for Mr Patten. Mr Patten, at what point must we speak of a human rights violation? When 20% of a population of a million people have been wiped out, is that a human rights violation, genocide or a disaster of biblical proportions? I think we speak of human rights violations when we find a number of serious breaches of laws that are known and generally respected. But when, as we have seen in Chechnya, we find that 200 000 people have been killed in nine years, with tens of thousands of cases of torture and rape, that is no longer a human rights violation, it is genocide. I think a lot of honourable Members, myself included, are somewhat reluctant to use the word genocide. We all know why. What happened in Europe 60 years was genocide. What happened in Rwanda was genocide. And what is happening today in Chechnya is genocide, and, Commissioner Patten, has nothing to do with human rights violations.
I want to thank the rapporteur, Mr Belder, and many other fellow Members who, I think, in the end were forced to admit that what is happening in Chechnya and in Russia is no longer about human rights violations and a lack of democracy. It is something far worse."@en1
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