Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-12-Speech-3-183-000"
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"en.20111012.16.3-183-000"2
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"Mr President, Baroness Ashton, there are times when I think that we need to step back and take stock, and this seems to me to be one of those times. I believe we are always trying to keep pace with what is happening and responding to things event by event, and in doing so we are losing some of our perspective on the situation as a whole.
It is true that every case is different, and every country that we are discussing here is a specific case, but forgive me for saying, Baroness Ashton, that it seems to me that it is difficult to discern the criteria that the European Union has been using for its actions in each case. I am afraid that we are often hostage to the interests of the Member States, or rather some of the Member States, but not all of them. That is why we have used and continue to use the phrase ‘double standards’ so much. Sometimes it is ‘yes’ to sanctions, sometimes ‘no’; sometimes intervention extends to bombing, as in the case of Libya, while sometimes the response is total silence, as in the case of the invasion of Bahrain by Saudi Arabian forces. Baroness Ashton, let me say that I have studied all the cases carefully and I have not seen a single declaration from the European institutions condemning the invasion of Bahrain by Saudi Arabian forces.
There are people being sentenced to death, non-stop violence, and doctors and nurses sentenced to up to 30 years in prison by a military tribunal because they were supposedly acting against the regime and should not have helped the injured who needed their aid. We have responded to the dictatorial monarchy in Bahrain and the dictatorial regime in Yemen – the Saleh regime – with far more silence than action. I am not in favour of intervention – I never have been – but I fear that, seen from the outside, we are putting ourselves in an untenable position when, instead of assisting the development, and democratic and revolutionary aspirations of the peoples of the Arab countries, and helping the Arab Spring, we are hindering its progress either by too much action or by too little, and I do not believe that this state of affairs should be allowed to continue.
I hope that the awarding of the Nobel Prize to a Yemeni activist can serve as a sign that we are on the side of the peoples driving the revolution."@en1
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