Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-16-Speech-4-214"
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"en.20060316.25.4-214"2
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".
Mr President, African states do not owe their origins to the African people themselves, but to European colonisation. Their boundaries were drawn by foreigners and sliced through population groups who wanted to stay together, while people were lumped together who had very little in common in terms of history, culture, language and religion. It is impossible for those people to see the authorities as something that is their own.
In practice, this translates into a serious barrier to democracy. In those situations, there is a great deal of scope for people who, by violent means, favour one population group while suppressing another. Only by horrific means can they keep their unstable states together. Under those circumstances, it is only violent profiteers who manage to hold onto state power for any length of time. Situations of this kind can be found in all parts of Africa, but particularly where Arabic-Islamic and non-Islamic population groups have been combined in one country. Everyone is now familiar with the tragedies, permanent civil wars and streams of refugees that have cursed Sudan.
We adopted a resolution on its neighbour Chad only yesterday. Hissène Habré was once the leader of that desert country, and was automatically accepted by the outside world, holding on to power in part of it until 1990, when he was forced to escape to Senegal. Even after his departure, there is no room for political opposition, the people are starving and terrorised by armed gangs, while neighbouring countries try to gain control over part of the territory. Charles Taylor fled from Liberia to Nigeria; Mengistu Haile Mariam fled from Ethiopia, and now lives in Zimbabwe, and for such as these, sentences imposed by a court of law might be appropriate. They might even deter future African politicians from developing into violent dictators.
The situation in Rwanda is not completely comparable. Some see the present dominance of the Tutsi minority as fair punishment for the Hutu majority’s attempt at driving out and massacring their age-old oppressors. The long-term continuation of the present situation – for indeed we must take into account the possibility of this situation continuing for the foreseeable future – continues to feed an age-long feeling of mutual hatred. That is why we should not lump all the countries together, but instead give due attention to the atrocities that have been committed in them."@en1
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