Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-139"
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"en.20020206.7.3-139"2
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"Mr President, the working environment of the UN Commission on Human Rights has been described as a sea of sorrows that knows no shores. While we are now once again steering our EU vessel into these waters we must avoid the sort of recklessness Odysseus showed when he sailed past the Pillars of Hercules out to the open sea. Although the EU has no coherent policy or strategy on human rights, with certain exceptions such as torture and the death penalty – in other words it lacks the assurance afforded by a compass and the firm guidance offered by nautical charts – we must steer our course at least with the help of bright stars and reference points.
The United States having failed to join the Commission last year, the EU is now the flagship of the Western European Group in Geneva. For that reason it is especially important that the Union should have an integrated policy based on clear geographical and thematic priorities, which does not grope about in the dark so much as it once did. President Cox last stressed the major significance of human rights in the EU and the work of this Parliament this morning. This should not be allowed to become just a rhetorical commitment. Undisturbed by commercial considerations and the songs of other such sirens, the EU must be able to allow its celebratory commitments to become a practical reality, and adopt an active position on difficult questions, such as China’s human rights violations with particular reference to the situation in Mongolia and in Tibet, or Russia’s behaviour, especially in Chechnya. In this connection neither can we allow the fight against terrorism in any way to jeopardise human rights and the principle of the Rule of Law, or tolerate their abuse as just an excuse for perhaps otherwise questionable intervention."@en1
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