Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-10-Speech-1-058"
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"en.20000410.3.1-058"2
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"Mr President, many comments have been made on Mr Kirkhope’s report, which makes many interesting points, and I would like to do more than add a few banal observations to these comments, but I shall nonetheless begin by saying, first of all, that child pornography is the product of essentially two phenomena.
The first phenomenon is the boom in pornography in general, and the second is, obviously, the exploitation of children for sexual purposes. I mention the boom in pornography in general because I do not think it is possible to isolate child pornography completely from the rest. The consumer experiences a phenomenon of habituation, if I can call it that, in the face of the incitements to pornography displayed on television, in hotel chains (and that includes here in Strasbourg or Brussels) or in all the magazines in view on shop shelves, and necessarily is driven ultimately to seek ever stronger stimuli, like a drug addict.
This is what happens, and that is why those people who, in France in 1987, for example, thought it right, in the name of freedom, to strenuously oppose the common-sense measure of removing pornographic magazines from display in newsagents’ shops, and keeping them under the counter, as it were, have to bear some responsibility for the measures which they are condemning today.
Just now I heard Mrs Ainardi, a left-wing Member of Parliament, complaining, for example, that a number of files have been compiled but are not used in any way for investigation or prosecution purposes, as they should be. I should simply like to remind my fellow Member that one of the very first measures on jurisdictional, judicial and police matters taken by the left-wing government in France was to order the destruction of the file on sexual perverts.
We should not, therefore, be astonished that our society is in the position that it is in, and that child sex abuse is commonplace. Is this, though, not also the inevitable continuation of a number of measures which have already been taken? For example, in the area of trivialising homosexuality. I am well aware that not all child pornography necessarily...
... you see, you are proving the truth of what I am trying to say. Some of our fellow Members who are here condemning child pornography are also demanding, for example, that homosexual couples (indeed why should we limit it to couples?) should be able to adopt children. This is the total reversal of the idea of adoption, whereby adoption is no longer in the interests of the child adopted but only in the interests of the adopting adult. This is necessarily the first step on the road which leads ultimately to the deviancies of child pornography.
I know, I am well aware of Mr Schulz’s customary protests. They are not going to stop me asking whether this horrendous decline in moral standards is not also a continuation of the morality of the termination of unborn children? Why, when one is prepared to accept state-controlled hospitals organising terminations of unborn children, should one find it absolutely scandalous in moral terms to abuse children, once born, for the sexual pleasure of adults?
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I wanted to say. Such practices have met with leniency, as we all know, within the Member States up to and including at the highest levels of their political classes. We therefore do not want a situation where you cannot see the wood for the trees. International cooperation is needed in this area, admittedly, as is Europol action, and why do we not extend Interpol’s mandate? If child pornography must be fought, however, then it must be fought as such, whatever the means of transmission! Whether by personal networks, by telephone, by Minitel, no one considers bringing back censorship or opening mail on the grounds that child pornography may also be sent by post. The Internet, Minitel, the post are nothing more than the medium. It is the originators we must combat. It is not the Internet itself which is to blame, but the child pornographers, and they must be punished severely. Everyone knows perfectly well that that is not the case today."@en1
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"(Applause and mixed reactions)"1
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