Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-27-Speech-3-124"
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"en.20041027.8.3-124"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, this House has given much attention to Sudan, and rightly so. Yet we have maybe paid too little attention to Belarus and the East, given that Mr Lukashenko and the Belarussian authorities pay no heed to the European Union’s position. The reason for this may be that our demands for the protection of human rights and democracy in Belarus have to date been voiced in a mere whisper. It is not a whisper that is needed, however. We need to make ourselves heard in a loud and firm voice, maybe even shout sometimes. That is what is required to protect national minorities in Belarus, including the large Polish minority, for example.
After all, we are not talking about a distant African or Asian country where a local tyrant is violating democracy. We are talking about the European Union’s closest neighbour, which is situated closer to Strasbourg or Brussels than some regions in a number of EU Member States. Are freedom of the media and freedom of elections, things that are the daily bread of Europeans, to be foreign words in Belarus? The short answer to this is ‘no’. We need to do more than merely discuss this issue. It is time to take action. We should boycott Mr Lukashenko, but we should not boycott the Belarussian people, organisations and youth."@en1
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