Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-28-Speech-3-371"
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"en.20050928.26.3-371"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, how many more dictatorships have to collapse, and how many more dissidents have to suffer death or the ruination of their health in prison, before dismal dictators like Mr Castro or Mr Lukashenko understand the harm they are doing to their nations? How much longer must dissidents continue to be hounded for their convictions, defending fundamental human rights and standing up for freedom and justice?
All citizens of the free world and especially those of us who come from the part of Europe that endured Communism’s iron rule, have a special calling to combat totalitarianism and contempt for human rights. That is why I very much hope that the European Commission and the European Council will stand shoulder to shoulder with us and help us in our struggle.
Commissioner, whilst I am grateful for the action taken to date, I feel the time has come to adopt a more determined stance. How much longer can we tolerate the fundamental values on which the European Union is founded being held in such contempt in Belarus, a country with which the Union has a common border? Sooner or later dictators fall, leaving devastation behind them. I refer to fractured and terrorised societies where individuals lack a spirit of independence and belief in their own worth.
We need to help the people of Belarus to topple Mr Lukashenko, and we should also help them to lay the foundations for a free civil society and educate the younger generation. We should support the democratic opposition in Belarus and condemn violations of citizens’ freedoms and human rights. The Commission ought to support Belarussian culture, of which the Belarussian language is a part. It would therefore be a mistake to support radio and television broadcasts in Russian. We should not be party to the russification of Belarus, as ordered by Mr Lukashenko. European funds should be devoted to radio and television broadcasts in the Belarussian language. I would like to point out to the Commission that such broadcasts already exist. Broadcasts in Belarussian from radio and television stations in Poland are being received in Belarus, and this work deserves support. Similarly, support should be given to the proposed radio station to be set up by free Belarussians
in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine to broadcast to Belarus. Those of us who hail from Central Europe remember well what a beacon of hope Radio Free Europe was for us.
Europe will always be a beacon of freedom, and I therefore call for a Radio Free Belarus to be set up."@en1
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"émigrés"1
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