Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-09-Speech-4-182"
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"en.20050609.30.4-182"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as has already been said, Azerbaijan is one of our partners in accordance with Europe’s neighbourhood policy, into which it was incorporated at this House’s insistence, even though – in common with all the other republics in the Southern Caucasus – it had not formed part of the first round. In Azerbaijan, then, we have a relatively demanding programme; it is on the basis of our principles, our values and our rule of law that the Azerbaijani state, too, is to act.
The country report that the Commission has drawn up, which is intended to result, over the coming months, in plans of action, offers us the opportunity to give a shot in the arm to the process of democratisation and establishing the rule of law. While not using the same language in every instance, we should weigh our words when articulating criticisms and denounce really serious human rights violations for what they are.
Nothing of what I have just heard from my fellow Members about the increasing number of arrests, about the absence of free elections – as Mr Meijer said – or the introduction of sharia law in Azerbaijan, which really is a tragedy – gets to grips with the reality of what is going on there. We have to bear in mind in which region the country is situated. This week, we have been discussing Uzbekistan, a country where the government had between 400 and 500 civilians shot for going on a demonstration, and here we are talking about what happened on 21 May, when a few demonstrators were arrested and then released after a few hours, and then on 4 June, when the government gave permission for a demonstration by the opposition. That may well be nowhere near our idea of what democracy and the rule of law are like, but I think we have to bear these things in mind in our assessment of these events and in the language we choose when describing them.
It is indeed the case that we have to observe these elections. They are due to be held in November, and the European institutions must not make the same mistake that they did in Ukraine, where we did not at first take the elections at all seriously and did not follow their progress. Mr Solana, the High Representative, woke up to the situation only when the Ukrainian people took to the streets to demonstrate against the electoral fraud that had been going on.
It follows that we in this House should, over the coming weeks and months, keep an eye on how this process progresses. We should send a delegation of observers and make use of the action plans now coming into force as a means of helping a country that is in a very difficult region, and parts of which are under occupation, yet which is determined to move towards democracy and towards becoming a good European neighbour. In so doing, we will be serving our own European interests, as well as democracy and the rule of law and human rights, better than if we were simply, with words of harsh criticism, to lay into countries with whose circumstances we are insufficiently familiar."@en1
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