Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-14-Speech-4-170"
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"en.20010614.8.4-170"2
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"Mr President, on Tuesday, Mohamed al-'Owhali was sentenced to life imprisonment in New York for the Nairobi US Embassy bombing, whilst his boss, Osama bin Laden, is given sanctuary by the Taliban as an Islamic hero of Afghanistan. This country is now so extreme and medieval that paper bags are banned in case they contain pulped versions of the Koran and women are veiled, segregated from men and unable to work at all. Even chess and the flying of kites have been banned as un-Islamic, though there are many Islamic scholars who would contest such interpretations of the Koran. Indeed the rules imposed by the Taliban would appear to derive less from the Koran than from the tribal customs dependent on a view that sees women's value as essentially procreative and economic alone.
Until recently the focus has been on ensuring that Muslims behave in accordance with Islam. However, in March, following a takeover of the Taliban by a hard-line faction linked to bin Laden, the extraordinarily beautiful 5th-century Buddhist statues in Bamiyan were destroyed with dynamite. Now echoes of Nazi Germany are heard as Hindus, many tens of thousands of whom I represent as a community in London, are required to identify themselves visibly in public with a yellow cloth.
I am not suggesting that direct intervention in the country which defied the Red Army is either appropriate or feasible. Moreover, intervention in the internal affairs of other states by outsiders can often exacerbate and prolong a conflict, as may have happened in the Balkans. It may be that we simply have to wait for things to burn themselves out. Nor should it be forgotten that there is peace of a kind in most of Afghanistan now.
However, the Taliban should be left in no doubt that, should they want our help, they will have to listen to the widespread concerns of people around the world, who are shocked and horrified at the brutal character of their medieval regime."@en1
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substitute; Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy (1999-07-21--2002-01-14)3
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