Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2014-02-26-Speech-3-835-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20140226.80.3-835-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Madam President, there are several worrying aspects of the use of armed drones to kill people – and I stress this resolution is about the use of armed drones.
Firstly, there is the lack of clarity that they are being used in compliance with international law. As Ms Gomes has said, they are banned for extrajudicial killings outside a conflict zone. That is generally illegal under international human rights law and, even in a state of conflict, civilians must not be targeted according to the laws of war.
Now, I welcome President Obama’s guidelines of a year ago curtailing occasions when drones can be used outside war zones, but there is still insufficient clarity, and that is part of the whole problem of a lack of transparency and accountability in democratic oversight in general. The CIA does not confirm or deny its drone programme but, as UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson said in a hearing that I co-sponsored with Ms Gomes and others last year, it is a bad idea to allocate to a secret service a campaign of warfare which needs transparency.
Thirdly there is the ethical concern: the risk of a lower threshold for remote-controlled slaughter than the threshold of last resort which is required under the law. Fourthly, this could lead to a free-for-all, giving al-Qaeda a licence to kill, where it would not be just government – not even our Western governments – but terrorist groups using them. So we need to draw the red lines now.
We need EU and Member State policy opposing illegal drone strikes and EU support for international rules. If we do not sort this out it could become another scandal of illegality and immorality to equal that of extraordinary rendition, torture and disappearance. European assistance or even silence at that time made us complicit. Let us not repeat that mistake again."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples