Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-27-Speech-4-135"
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"en.20051027.17.4-135"2
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".
Mr President, I apologise. I should, of course, have acknowledged the presence of the Commissioner the last time I spoke, but I will this time.
I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak briefly on the motion on Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is a large and very influential country in Central Asia. Its stability directly impinges on the whole region and the EU has rightly attempted to build contacts and a relationship with this geographically close and significant neighbour. For me, however, this motion has one main focus: to ask again what happened in Andijan last May and to make a further call for an open and independent inquiry. There seems to be a view that, by asking for the truth to be established, we are in some way taking sides against the Uzbek authorities. The EU has human rights and international law at the centre of its value system and it is our responsibility to call for the truth behind this tragedy.
To date, there are three versions of the ‘truth’. Firstly, the official Uzbek and the President Karimov version, according to which the killings were ‘a measured response to an Islamist uprising where 187 criminals were killed’. Next, there is the media and NGO version, which reports a bloodbath where women and children were mowed down by armed police, bodies were dragged to a school nearby and left lying there until the following day, some of them not dead, and then taken to hospital. We do not even know the numbers that were killed. Reports vary between 500 and 1500 people. Thirdly, there are the locals in Andijan, most of them silenced or suffering from amnesia, basically afraid to speak out because some who have done so have disappeared.
The EU must insist on an independent inquiry and we must take action that will ensure that, if we are refused that, it will have implications for the relationship between Uzbekistan and the European Union."@en1
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