Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-04-Speech-4-181"
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"en.20020704.9.4-181"2
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"Mr President, I rise with a heavy heart because it is never a pleasant duty to speak about human rights abuses. It reminds us that individuals throughout the world, because they are different, because of where they were born, to whom they were born, are not given those universal freedoms that we so often take for granted.
The heavy heart is also because I am a friend of Egypt. I recognise the importance of Egypt and hold the Egyptian Government, President Mubarak and the Ambassador to the European Union in the highest regard. But when it comes to human rights abuses, if we are selective in the application of principle, then we lay this House open to the charge of hypocrisy.
What do we ask? We ask for simple human rights: the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the right to freedom from torture and cruel or inhuman treatment, the right to privacy, the right to equality before the law and we reaffirm also Article 14.7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which has been mentioned today.
Let me say personally – I am not speaking on behalf of my group – that, as a gay man, if I had been born in Egypt or somewhere else, because I was different, because of the people with whom I associated, or because I declared myself publicly, I could have every single one of the human rights I have mentioned taken away from me. Look at me. I am human. I bleed. I laugh. I cry. We are each of us exactly the same, but strangely others find a difference to deprive us of our human rights. Therefore to do nothing is to condone human rights abuses wherever they occur. To look the other way is to throw away our own rights and our claim to call ourselves civilised.
I call upon the Egyptian President and the Egyptian Government to do the right, just and proper thing and to release the men in question."@en1
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