Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-17-Speech-4-423-000"
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"en.20110217.23.4-423-000"2
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"−
Mr President, the Arab countries are being rocked by a wave of popular uprisings that are spreading to them all, one by one, and I hope that this will continue.
Therefore, I and my fellow Members from the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance have tabled three amendments to update this resolution, and I hope that, together, we will be able to adopt a resolution worthy of the name.
An unprecedented wave of protest against the dictatorships in power in those countries is gaining ground. These dictatorships are in place more often than not with the support and, at best, amid the silence of all of the Western regimes. No country seems immune to popular uprisings, and that is all to the good. We took too long – you took too long – to realise what was happening in those countries, and you are still delaying now. It took until 2 February for the European Parliament to adopt a resolution on Tunisia, and it is only now, at this part-session, that we have adopted one on Egypt.
We had requested, in connection with these emergency situations, a resolution on Algeria. Our request was refused once again, just as, for months, you – or at least the vast majority of you – refused to see what was happening in Tunisia.
Today, protest movements are being formed, as we speak, in Iran, in Libya, with regard to which you have just given your support – your conditional support, but your support nonetheless – to a partnership agreement, and also in Bahrain and in Yemen, to mention only those that we know the most about. Yes, that is right, in Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been in power for no fewer than 33 years. Talk about a managed democracy! Of course, it is much better than the situation in Libya, since Mr Gaddafi has been in power for 42 years!
We were among the few who said that we could not vote today on a resolution on Yemen without taking account of what was happening in that country. Men and women there are fighting for their freedom. Violence is erupting between supporters and opponents of the regime.
Since the rallies began at the end of January, hundreds of people have been injured. Yesterday in Aden, a young demonstrator was shot dead during clashes with the police, who opened fire to disperse a gathering. Right now, students in Saada are barricaded inside their campus, where they are still surrounded by the police, and we remain silent.
When we think of Yemen, we think only of the problem of capital punishment for minors. I am by no means suggesting that the abolition of the death penalty should be abandoned – I have always been a staunch supporter of its abolition, and I believe that any supposedly democratic country that is incapable of abolishing such a punishment is criminal and should not lecture others on democracy and human rights, even if it is the world’s leading power.
Yes, this capital punishment is even more unacceptable when it is applied to minors, especially in a country where it is impossible to know for sure when a person was born and where this impossibility is used to sentence people to death, the benefit of the doubt being given, dare I say it, because of the failure to establish their date of birth and so prove that they were minors at the time of the offence.
And you would like us to adopt a resolution focusing on just one issue, a resolution that merely emphasises, in paragraph seven, the need for reforms, as called for by, I quote, ‘so many demonstrators’? That is a bit weak."@en1
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