Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-10-Speech-4-259"
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"en.20080710.21.4-259"2
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"Mr President, as we know, Parliament has been concerned about the situation in Bangladesh for a considerable period of time. We supported calls for moves to ensure free and fair elections and we also supported the calls from civil society for revised and updated electoral registers to ensure that maximum participation would be possible within those elections.
I think it is important to say that we very much welcome the progress that has been made on that new electronic register. It is a major task which has been undertaken and indeed, if it is fulfilled in time and ensures that minority groups etc. are also included on it, this will really be an historic achievement by the Bangladeshi authorities. We know that the electoral register has also had a very positive effect already, certainly for a number of women from poorer families and backgrounds, who feel that at last they have an identity, that they can now borrow small amounts of money to set up their own businesses etc.
So there have been some positive moves. We also welcome recent action on war criminals and the action that the government, or at least some of it, has taken against corruption.
But we have major concerns about the role and activity of the continuing interim government and the state of emergency. There are some who have said that the state of emergency is a technical issue, as it were, to ensure that a government can at least continue beyond the caretaker period.
But whether one agrees with that or not, I think that what is happening with the state of emergency is really beginning to reflect a clear lack of checks and balances within the system there, particularly given the reports, as we have just been hearing, of mass arrests, the lack of due process, the allegations of torture, reports of extrajudicial killings, pressure on journalists and increasing violence against women.
So there is a clear need for the interim government to rein in the security forces, to cease the mass arrests and to proceed to either charge or release those people arrested and to ensure due process. Certainly this resolution reflects the wish which I think is there in Parliament to lift the state of emergency and to ensure that civil society can proceed to full, fair, free elections with the support of the European Union, at any rate in its electoral monitoring capacity."@en1
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