Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-15-Speech-4-200"
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"en.20070215.26.4-200"2
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".
Mr President, I wish to thank the Commissioner and the representative of the Council for being here today. The time has come for the Union to take action, as the situation in Guinea is sliding downhill.
Guinea has for too long been deliberately kept in a state of underdevelopment by the dictatorial regime and is becoming mired in a tragic deadlock for lack of transparency and democracy. The people of Guinea have had enough of poverty, destitution and social injustice; they have not enjoyed the benefits of Guinea’s riches – the country has an abundance of natural resources – which are monopolised and mismanaged by the President and his cronies, who are as guilty as he is. President Conté, who has been in power since 1984, is ill, and is clinging to life as he is clinging to power. If he survives, no one will begrudge him his health. If, on the other hand, he remains in power and re-establishes a state of emergency. We will neither understand nor accept this.
After decades of undiluted power, one has no choice but to condemn such an attitude when wisdom, or a modicum of compassion for his people, would surely have led the President to prepare for the smooth transfer of power to his successor and for the transition to a genuinely democratic regime. Instead of that, a state of siege has been declared, the right to assembly and freedom of movement have been curtailed, and the military have violently broken up peaceful demonstrations and killed people. This is unacceptable.
We have no choice but to condemn this brutality, this lack of respect for the most basic human rights of the people of Guinea and the shameful behaviour of a leader who is at the end of his reign but whose capacity for causing suffering is sadly not at an end. We must demand that a committee of inquiry be set up to look into the events in Guinea in order to ascertain the full extent of the repression and the level of the hierarchy at which decisions have been taken and by whom.
Furthermore, will the EU demand political dialogue, as laid down in Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement? We must keep a very close eye on the situation, because, if it were to continue to worsen, not only would the people of Guinea suffer but so too could the whole of that region of Africa, as the deepening internal conflict would spread to neighbouring countries. The past is sadly all too full of such examples."@en1
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