Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-06-06-Speech-1-026-000"
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"en.20110606.15.1-026-000"2
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"Mr President, thank you for your kind words of solidarity.
Seventy years ago, about 50 000 Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian nationals were brutally deported from their homes in the Soviet-occupied Baltic States. If we compare that figure of 50 000 out of the then 5.5 million population of the three Baltic States to that of the UK or France, the 50 000 Baltic deportees would have meant proportionately 432 000 citizens deported from the UK or 363 000 persons deported from France. Happily, this did not happen in these countries.
Already in May 1941, as the President has said, the Soviet leadership had decided to cleanse Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of anti-Soviet elements in political and economic elites. The deportees were transported in cattle wagons to Soviet Siberia and the far north to face hunger, cold and forced labour. Men were separated from their families and brought to prison camps where many of them died or were executed. In many places, almost 50% of the deportees died.
The 1941 deportations delivered a devastating blow to democratic civil society. This indiscriminate violence caused deep psychological traumas for the victims, resulting in long-lasting fears, suppressed emotions, self-censorship and passiveness. This led to the feeling that justice could never prevail. To quote Sakharov Prize winner, Sergei Kovalev, there is no doubt that in modern terminology, these acts were crimes against humanity. Therefore, the remembrance, 70 years later, of the Baltic deportations is an opportunity for a deepened understanding that your past is our past and vice versa. The full knowledge of the 1941 crimes against humanity should become an integral part of our common European history.
Dear colleagues, I would like to thank you all for your attention and solidarity, which the nations of the Baltic countries have been looking forward to for so many years."@en1
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