Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-26-Speech-3-158"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20050126.8.3-158"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Thank you very much, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. It is an honour for me to speak here, even though the Chamber is now half empty and we are only saved by the presence of the interpreters. Please allow me to get personal for a while, because I have the feeling that everyone wishes to count themselves as victims, but we do not wish to point a finger at anyone in particular as being the culprit and I think that the blame needs to be spread out before us. The Slovak state was one of the first satellite states of the Nazi Reich from which Jews were deported to the death camps. The deportation of Slovak Jews formed part of the process known by the Nazis as the ‘Final Solution’ for the Jewish question in Europe. The Final Solution sounds just as dreadful today. The case of the Slovak state is important from a historical standpoint, since it was a trial country for testing the Nazi strategy with respect to the Jews for subsequent application in other countries, and not only in the field of deportation. In fact, of fatal historical significance. Eighty-nine thousand Jews were deported from the Slovak state. Just a short trip into the history of ideologically motivated murder. I cannot omit to mention that the Slovak state was headed by a Catholic priest. The death camps saw the murder of Jews, Roma, antifascists of all nationalities and many others condemned to an absurd and vicious death. Has history taught us anything? Do we realise that the Holocaust has adopted the role of a universal symbol for all evil, representing, as it does, the most extreme form of genocide? Do we know what preceded this atrocity? Was it a word, or a sentence, which triggered the whole murderous machinery of hatred and outrage? I should like to ask you a question, Commissioner and Minister. In your view, is the defamation of a nation, an ethnic group, a race or a creed a punishable offence in the democratic world? Does the freedom of expression, as one of the basic democratic values, reach its limit when it becomes an instrument of such defamation of a nation, an ethnic group, etc? Do not the modern Nazis paradoxically hide behind hard-won democratic values and freedoms and should we not put a stop to them before these extremists in brown jack-boots come out onto the streets under the shield of democratic principles? We await your answer, Sir. Thank you, Mr President."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples