Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-14-Speech-3-115-000"
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"en.20111214.18.3-115-000"2
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"Mr President of the European Parliament, honourable Members of the Parliament, guests, let me begin by giving you my warmest greetings and expressing my thanks and gratitude to you for having chosen me as a recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. This prize has huge symbolic and moral value. It is something that the people of Libya appreciate. They have congratulated me on having been awarded the prize.
It also provides further stimulus for the consolidation of the values we have always been in favour of, that is to say, the creation of a democratic, constitutional state based upon the equality of all, a state where women enjoy the freedom to vote and stand in elections, to make their voices heard.
Women have made huge sacrifices in Libya. Women have laid down their lives. They have seen their nearest and dearest, their children die, to try to get rid of this totalitarian regime which we suffered from for more than 42 years – in prisons, with constant humiliation, constant violations of our human dignity. It was these years and years of dictatorship that eventually led young people to lay down their lives, to shed their blood, even though they had no weapons. The only weapon that they had was their commitment, their conviction. That is what won out in the end, thanks to the support from the international community and this European Parliament. I would just like to express my gratitude to you for that.
Now we need to rebuild our country, to do so in a tolerant fashion, showing tolerance even to those who committed crimes, who targeted our sons, our brothers, those who destroyed houses, who violated human dignity. I am sure that you saw these things on television, all the crimes that were committed in Libya. Again, we are grateful for the unambiguous economic, diplomatic and military support that Europe provided.
As I said, we had no weapons and the dictator tried to keep us down by force thanks to the links he had forged with certain countries, countries that supported him for various reasons – economic reasons sometimes, and other reasons. But all of these countries realised that ultimately the people would win. The people always remain. That is why we would like to thank Europe for the position that it adopted and thank of course the whole of the international community.
But we have to say that our European neighbours – our closest neighbours – were the first to support the Libyan people, despite their lack of weapons. Thanks to that support, we managed to get rid of this totalitarian regime that had been in place for 42 years. I myself of course was a prisoner of conscience under Gaddafi. I was in prison for 31 years, including nine years in solitary confinement. I was tortured, I was denied health care, but I did not lose hope. During all of those years, I did not abandon my human dignity.
In Libya now, we want to be treated on the same footing as everybody else; we do not want to be described as a nation of terrorists or people who have no right to life. We love life: our own lives and the lives of others as well. And we hope that the Sakharov Prize will allow us to make progress and allow other states still suffering from dictatorships to make progress too. Please support us, and support us in trying to achieve those goals. We have a long way to go before our goals can be met but, thanks to patience, thanks to persistence, I am sure that we will achieve them. The first step is to set up a parliament and a constitution voted by the people. Thank you once again for listening to me."@en1
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