Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-21-Speech-3-300"
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"en.20040421.12.3-300"2
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"Mr President, the annual report on human rights is once again, unfortunately, the occasion on which we acknowledge that the world situation is becoming worse. The law of the jungle and the option of repression and military intervention are supplanting the principles and values of international law. The war on terrorism is seen as justifying all-out aggression, in many regions of the world, against individual and collective freedoms.
The list is a long one, and includes Turkey, where Leyla Zana and her companions have just been unjustly condemned, once again, for speaking out on behalf of the Kurdish people; Tunisia, where harassment and repression of any democrat are increasing, a phenomenon to which the European Union is indifferent; Morocco, where violations of the rights of the Sahrawi people are increasing in occupied Western Sahara; Iraq, where US occupying forces are causing real human tragedies, buying up the country’s natural resources at low prices and taking upon themselves the right to behave like masters, and Palestine where, in the words of Avraham Burg, the former Speaker of the Knesset, the situation is so explosive that, ‘crying out is a moral imperative’.
One could also mention the intolerable harassment of those who defend human rights all over the world. According to the 2003 Annual Report of the International Federation for Human Rights Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, ‘The present climate that focuses on security first and the implementation of arbitrary measures restricting individual freedoms undermines the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this context, it has become more and more difficult to denounce the adoption of restrictive laws, to defend the right to a fair trial, to fight against the death penalty and to condemn torture.’ In some countries, journalists, lawyers, political opponents and trade unionists have become real targets to be shot down. However, now more than ever, support and encouragement for these men and women in their struggle for democracy, justice and peace are proving to be vital to our common future.
Finally, respect and guarantees for fundamental rights such as the right to sovereignty, the right to food self-sufficiency, the right to health, and the right to live in dignity and not in misery, are also playing their part in the building of a better world. In that sense I support the rapporteur’s action, particularly as regards reproductive health."@en1
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