Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-16-Speech-4-197"
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"en.20000316.7.4-197"2
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"Mr President, I must contradict Mr Markov quite categorically. It is not apportioning blame to one side to talk of the genocide committed by Russia against the Chechen people, as Lord Judd does in the report by the Parliamentary Assembly delegation of the Council of Europe. Of course, both sides are guilty of infringements, but Lord Judd’s diagnosis is pretty unequivocal: genocide. That is reason enough not to ask Russia to investigate infringements and war crimes. It would be highly unusual to ask the murderer to investigate himself and we need international bodies to do this. What we need is the international criminal court and we must bring those responsible to justice. Of course, we must call on the Russian authorities here but we too must become more involved than previously, because this is not a simple internal matter of state; it is a question of human rights violations on a massive scale in an area subject to the Human Rights Convention of the Council of Europe, in an area subject to the system of rights and values of the OSCE. We seem to keep forgetting that the Chechen government was elected under the supervision of the OSCE and that we also need to intercede for this legitimate Chechen government, except that we cannot find this government today, because its representatives are holed up in the mountains fighting for their very survival. That is why I warn against a pseudo balanced approach.
Naturally, we must condemn infringements on both sides, but we should not confuse the perpetrator of genocide with his victims and that means that we must take good care not only to provide humanitarian aid – that must be done and it is high time that something was done by the EU here – but also to ensure that a political solution is found to the conflict. A political solution to the conflict cannot be enforced using the arms of the Russian army, because then the war will just keep breaking out in new forms as guerrilla war or as terrorism or as some other form of underground war. So we need to ensure that a negotiated solution is reached with the elected representatives of the Chechen people.
Today we discussed the right to self-determination in the Western Sahara; I should like to point out that the Chechen people also has a right to life and we must safeguard the Chechen people’s right to life, either jointly with Russia or on our own. We have not yet reached that point, but we did hear how Russian society is currently becoming more radical from an expert this morning.
We interceded for the release of the Russian journalist Mr Babitsky. He was due to visit the European Parliament today and give us an eye witness account of the situation in Chechnya, but he was not allowed to leave Russia. He was not allowed to come to Strasbourg because the Russian authorities are frightened of the free and open report of an independent journalist who looks at both sides critically and wished to throw some light on the truth here and reveal the genocide being committed against the Chechen people. It is a scandal and we cannot accept it. Freedom of the press for Russia is also a service to the Russian people."@en1
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