Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-13-Speech-2-458-000"
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"Madam President, I would like to thank honourable Members for what has been a very important and very interesting debate, both covering specific issues and the general thrust of what we are trying to do.
Ms De Keyser raised particularly the issues of other Commission pieces of work, especially trade. Again, I have tried to capture that a bit in my thoughts about how to bring together our human rights work right across the Commission, so that in trade, in development – in everything that we do – it is part of the approach that we take, so I agree with you. Again, I pay tribute to the work that you have done on this.
On Camp Ashraf, Mr Stevenson, you have been tireless in pushing on this issue. I would say three or four things to you. Firstly, we just have to be a little careful about what we say might happen. Secondly, we are working very closely with the UN on this. The UN is in the lead. I have pushed through my discussions with the Secretary-General and the Special Representative. I have met with the Iraqi Foreign Minister on several occasions, and I have sent a special envoy to do a lot of work, not least with Member States. As you rightly recognise, it is important that those Member States who have nationals as residents in Camp Ashraf also need to be aware of what needs to happen. You will know, most recently, that I have indeed offered support to the UN in every possible way, in terms of how we can make sure that people are properly monitored and can feel secure.
But what we must be careful about is telling them that things may go wrong. What is important is to put it in place, so that they can feel confident in the UN process properly looking after them. It is a real challenge for us, but that is what we have to do. I think you know that I have worked extremely hard to try to make sure that the EU properly supports this international and UN process. I hope that this will see effect, as the UN now moves forward to try to support people into the future that they want to see for themselves.
Mr Karim, I will not answer on Kashmir now, but I understand exactly what you were saying and perhaps we can talk about that. Thank you for your comments about responding to your letters. I do try to respond to letters from Members of the European Parliament as quickly as I can in all cases.
Finally, Mr Belder, you raised Iran. You know that we have done a lot of work with Iran on human rights; we have sanctions against them for that. You know, too, that I watch with great interest and try very hard in my discussions with the Iranians to persuade them to move away from the death penalty. In any country it is wrong. In every country, we try to make sure that we oppose it as effectively as we possibly can. On any individual case that honourable Members wish to raise with me, we will do our very best to let you know what we are doing. We follow all these cases where we possibly can – as many as we know about – both on the ground and within Brussels, and we try our very best, not least with our partners across the world, to make sure that people’s rights are respected.
I wanted to apologise to Ms Vaidere, but she is not here. I was distracted because we got the news of the death of four people and 46 injured in Liège in Belgium, which has been unfortunately due to what looks like explosions. It flashed on my phone and I must confess that I was very shocked and had to look at it, but I do apologise for not listening for that moment.
I would also like – because I did not do it earlier – to say thank you to Ms Andrikienė for the work that she did in 2010 on the human rights report. It was an extremely important and valuable document. I skipped over her name – and I do apologise for that – in the earlier part.
I also want to make it clear that this is not meant to be the definitive strategy. The reason for that is simply that I want the European Parliament to be involved and engaged with me as we drive this forward. You can never have a definitive moment in human rights where you say that we have actually got everything written down and everything covered, because situations change. As I have tried to argue in my contribution to it – and, yes, it did take time because I was not satisfied with some of the ideas and I wanted to push further and try out things and discuss and involve people as much as I possibly could within the service – we should look at how we can make it more effective and how we can take the relationships we have across the world and make sure that we use them to further the opportunities for democracy, peace, security and human rights for people across the world.
So I hope honourable Members will see it for what it is and what it is not. I do not pretend that it is a document seeking to give you all the answers, but rather to put down some thoughts that I hope will inspire further debate. Colleagues have raised a number of specific issues and I am just going to comment on two or three of them.
First of all, the issue of freedom of religion and belief. We have done a huge amount of work this year and it is an issue that honourable Members have raised on a number of occasions and which, indeed, Member States have raised in the Foreign Affairs Council. I am very pleased that we were able to achieve the consensus on our UN resolution promoting freedom of religion and belief. It is so significant that we take this forward. You will know that I have said it must be part of the reporting that we now carry out as part of our gathering together of information on human rights.
I appreciate what Mr Howitt said about not all delegations being up to speed. I know that. We are at the beginning of building a service and trying to make sure that every delegation all over the world has the resources, the people, the training and the way of going about things. It is not yet complete. They would be the first to say that, and I would echo that. What I hope you appreciate is the commitment to try to get there, not just from me, but also from all the heads of delegation when I met with them most recently.
The issues that concern lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual people are really issues of core importance to how we support people across the world. As honourable Members know, I have a long and personal commitment on this issue, and I think it is core to what we do. I raise it with individual countries when I visit, and we also make many statements and promote the importance of this issue in everything that we do.
For reference on the Commonwealth – I am afraid that Ms Sinclaire did not wait for the answer either – I was a special guest of the Commonwealth, which meant that while I was in Australia, I had the opportunity to address 53 ministers, to have 28 bilateral meetings and to take part in two events, particularly with NGOs, on forced marriage and women as agents of change. On the way back, I also visited China and Japan, especially to show our solidarity for the people of Japan, still suffering from the effects of the tsunami."@en1
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