Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-06-Speech-3-382-000"
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"en.20110706.21.3-382-000"2
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"Mr President, I would like to ask Baroness Ashton whether she has seen the shocking images on YouTube in the past two days that show a man in Syria filming demonstrations in a street full of homes. At one moment, he sees a sniper from the presidential militia and is killed by this very same man, live, as he is filming. That is what you see on YouTube: his own death.
This is what we should do; otherwise, we will continue to see what is happening now: more killings. We should do this as fast as possible. My proposal is: please stop waiting for unanimity – which will not come in the UN – and take the lead on these two additional initiatives.
That man – and there are many cases like that – was killed because he was trying to make one thing clear: he was taking these pictures to put them on the Internet. He wanted everybody outside Syria to see what is happening in Syria, what continues to happen: a massacre of citizens with more than 1 500 deaths for the moment. In the outside world – let us be honest – we are watching and doing nothing, or almost nothing, to prevent it.
I know Syria is not Libya, so there is no front line to defend. What is happening there is completely different from what is happening in Libya. In that sense, Libya is maybe more difficult to tackle, but that does not mean we cannot do more than we are currently doing. We are waiting for a UN Security Council resolution, and that has been the case now for weeks and weeks. We are hoping for a breakthrough with Brazil, with Russia and with China on this issue, and it has not been forthcoming.
When we see, on the one hand, dramatic scenes taking place on the ground, live, and, on the other hand, Brazil, China and Russia blocking the Security Council, we have to imagine another way and ask further questions. We have to do more on our side and not wait for a Security Council resolution which will not come in the next few days or even weeks.
I have a proposal. I think two things can be done in addition to what we have discussed up to now. First of all, we can extend the list of the people covered under sanctions. There is currently a list of 30 people, which has had to meet with the approval of the international community, or at least of the US and the European Union.
We have to extend sanctions to all the 200 families who are currently in power in Syria, and who still support Assad by earning money thanks to the regime. It is thanks to these 200 families that Assad is still there. It is thanks to these 200 families that the massacre is still going on, and it is thanks to these 200 families that – as we can see on the Internet – snipers are killing innocent people on the streets.
We can do more than waiting; waiting for weeks and weeks for a resolution that is not forthcoming in the Security Council. What we can do is target these people and extend the travel ban and asset freezing to these 200 families, who are very well known, and extend the list of 30. That is the first thing to do.
I have a second proposal: we should finally face up to reality. There is no front line to defend, so we cannot do the same thing as in Libya, but we should at least consider the possibility of creating a safe zone, what we call a ‘demilitarised zone’, on Syrian territory.
This is not wishful thinking, because it is currently under consideration in Ankara. This has already been done, in 1991 in Iraq – with the support of the US, you will remember – to protect the people living in the north of the country."@en1
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