Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-19-Speech-3-527-000"
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"en.20110119.25.3-527-000"2
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"Mr President, as we debate here today, it appears that Alexander Lukashenko is rushing through plans for an inauguration this Friday, with no international guests, precisely because the international community does not recognise the Belarus elections as free, fair or transparent. If it goes ahead, it will be a black Friday to follow what has begun to be dubbed ‘Bloody Sunday’, 19 December, when 700 democratic protestors were arrested, including seven of the nine presidential candidates in the elections, one of whom has had both his legs broken and another beaten by riot police until he sustained brain damage.
I ask the Vice-President/High Representative and the EU Member States to back the Polish proposals for a visa ban and, as our resolution makes clear, support the principle for further targeted economic sanctions.
In this context, one of the things that the European Union can do is to express clear and simple demands for the release of all political prisoners, for the authorities to lift any threat of banning or restricting the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, and for quick movement towards the organisation of new elections.
For the future, I agree with what has been said today both by Catherine Ashton and by my own group, that we need to keep the multilateral track open and we need to put an emphasis on civil society and support for it. But I do say that this is not simply a watershed moment for democracy and human rights in Belarus: it is a test of Europe’s own Neighbourhood Policy. Yes, we seek clear and closer cooperation and partnership with our neighbours to encourage a process of increasing congruence with those on our borders where there is a genuine mutual commitment to do so, but this will not work if there is an absence of actions when that mutual commitment is missing and things are going wrong.
The pain we should worry about in this debate is not the pain intended of proposed smart sanctions by Europe against Belarus, but the physical pain of the beatings inflicted on people who share Europe’s commitment to democracy and human rights and who need us to stand together with them in solidarity so that the long years of pain of Belarus can come to an end."@en1
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