Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-043"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20050427.7.3-043"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Thank you, Mr President. The reason why this House’s reports on human rights are important political statements is not that they are binding in law, but that they make a political impact and that conclusions can be drawn from them. Much of what is in this report – and this is what is weak about it – cannot absolutely be described as having to do with human rights issues. Let me give a number of examples.
We all regard Kyoto as an important issue, but it does not exactly have much to do with human rights. Social rights are important, but they belong in another category. They are not human rights in the traditional sense of the word. The right to an abortion is not a human right; it is a violation of a human right. More to the point, it is not for the EU to tell any country what to do about it; the rule of subsidiarity applies.
Let me take this further by quoting Brecht. In his ‘The resistible rise of Arturo Ui’, he wrote: ‘The womb he crawled from is still going strong’. By that he meant the anti-Semitism and racial hatred preached by Hitler and the Third Reich. We cannot be indifferent to anti-Semitism in Russia, particularly when it is propagated by the political class. When 20 members of the State Duma call for Jewish organisations to be banned from Russia, we have to respond, and, likewise, we have to understand that Russia has also been behind the terrible fighting and violations of human rights in Chechnya, and that politics underlies much of what appals us in Beslan and elsewhere. While suicide bombings are indeed murder, they are also carried out in response to political circumstances and causes.
We must not expect too much of reports on human rights, even of those originating from this House. It is an unfortunate fact that human rights alone will not bring about the political solutions that are needed.
Not only that, but nor must we apply double standards. It is not acceptable that we should refuse to allow a country like Croatia to enter negotiations with the EU because of its lamentable failure to arrest a general who is suspected of human rights violations, while at the same time opening negotiations with Turkey, which – as we can read in press reports – is continuing to be extremely dilatory about implementing the Copenhagen political criteria. I do not want to hold the Turkish Government responsible for the country’s most popular reading matter turning out to be Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ – of all things – but you do have to wonder what is going on."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples