Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-13-Speech-4-202"
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"en.20020613.8.4-202"2
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"Mr President, Mr Sacrédeus has, I think, addressed something of essential importance. Byelorussia, or Belarus, will, in a very short time, be one of the European Union's neighbours. What was termed Poland in the Middle Ages was in actual fact a federation consisting of Poland, Lithuania and Byelorussia, each part having equal rights. Lithuania and Poland will, next year or the year thereafter, be able to become members of the European Union, whereas Belarus seems today to be further away than the Democratic Republic of Congo, about which we were speaking earlier.
This is a tragedy, responsibility for which lies principally at Mr Lukashenko's door. The people of Belarus played a part in the democracy movement that led to the fall of Communism and helped to bring about the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is for that reason that we have to give forthright support to the movement for democracy and human rights in that country, a movement that is supported not only by us but by former human rights campaigners in Prague, Warsaw and elsewhere; we have to send a signal to the people there that we know that they are Europeans, and that they really belong to us. We must, of course, use all democratic and diplomatic means to work towards the OSCE becoming genuinely operational there, to ensure the failure of the attempts at doing away with monitoring and concealing this oppression behind a veil of authoritarian measures.
I would, though, be very wary of involving Moscow in this process, as Moscow, being the former colonial power, of course bears some responsibility for what is happening in Belarus today. We have to work together with everyone, including Russia, but I see the European Union as having a special responsibility to make it clear that this European people too will have a place among us, but that the OSCE, and then the Council of Europe, must do their work, and, above all and most crucially, human rights must be made to prevail. That all this should be, as it were, obscured and befogged by one regime, is something we cannot permit."@en1
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