Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-09-10-Speech-1-089-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20120910.23.1-089-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, during those nine months of work, with the confidence and valuable support of all key players, including – and I say this most emphatically – MEPs, who never gave up the fight for truth and justice, we were able to gain an awareness of the extent of the elements incriminating Europe and the Member States in the implementation of the CIA’s secret programme.
The Commission, while having taken note of the facts, has still not mobilised all its justice and human rights resources and instruments to ensure that Member States comply with their fundamental obligations. It must take initiatives to uphold the principle of mutual assistance and solidarity.
Commissioner Reding, the report invites us, you, the Council, the victims and all those who seek the truth to return to this House in a year’s time.
Last week, Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen resident in Germany who had been detained without trial for five years at Guantánamo, again came to Parliament to speak about his ordeal, still very current, and to seek justice for the victims.
Commissioner Reding, if Mr Kurnaz has the strength to come back in a year’s time, will we be able to tell him that facts have been established, that responsibilities have been acknowledged, and that we can, finally, apologise to him on behalf of the European Union?
All these key players are categorical and all the elements, that is to say, the research carried out by the Council of Europe, the special UN rapporteurs, the Red Cross, national and international human rights organisations, investigative journalists, the testimony of the victims, of their lawyers and of CIA agents, concur: the Member States have to answer for their active or passive complicity in crimes of torture, secret detention and enforced disappearance.
For nine months, I was able to see the patently obvious limitations of the investigative steps taken by the Member States and their stubborn determination to conceal the truth: lack of political will, prevalence of national interests, narrow remits for investigations, abuse of state secrecy, lack of transparency, restriction of the rights of victims and of their lawyers. The imagination of national authorities knows no bounds.
In putting this report to the vote, Parliament aims to take a decisive step towards putting an end to the denial of reality, and hence of justice, which has characterised the strategy of the EU Member States for 11 years now.
Through its recommendations to the Member States, the Council and the Commission, the report expresses a simple and clear will: every effort must be made to ensure that rigorous, independent and transparent investigations, capable of determining responsibilities and obtaining justice for the victims, are concluded.
The European Union and the Member States owe it, first and foremost, to the victims, but they also owe it to Europe’s citizens, who are entitled to demand from our institutions, from their institutions, respect for democratic values and the rule of law on which they are based. To be effective, we had to be concrete and specific and to stay abreast of the issue so that we could identify the best levers to help justice move forward.
We therefore chose to focus on the issue of secret prisons on EU territory. Thanks to the excellent cooperation of Eurocontrol, which I thank, and to the visits and meetings of the Members of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) (rapporteur, shadow rapporteurs), today there are grounds for the report to adopt recommendations of relevance to Poland, Lithuania and Romania in particular. These three countries are now before the European Court of Human Rights facing allegations of torture, secret detention and failure to investigate effectively.
Your rapporteur is convinced, more than ever, that only a coordinated European approach aimed at supporting Member States can break the code of silence.
The challenge for the Council is to take the matter in hand officially and to put it on its work agenda, to acknowledge its responsibility and, finally, to apologise."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples