Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-15-Speech-4-221"
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"en.20060615.31.4-221"2
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".
Mr President, the situation in North Korea, if one thinks about it at all, appears depressing and hopeless, but I find myself having, time and time again, to think back 25 years to the days when I was a young assistant in this House and was fortunate enough to have had a hand in the first resolution – which was in support of Charter 77. There were three MEPs who worked very hard at the time to bring it about: Klaus Hänsch, who is still a Member here; Otto von Habsburg and Jiří Pelikán, who used to sit as an MEP for Italy.
Today, we find ourselves debating human rights under the chairmanship of a Czech president, with a Czech Commissioner, the Iron Curtain – not least thanks to the courage of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe – having disappeared some 15 or 16 years ago. That should strengthen us to hold fast to the truth that the inhuman communist regime in North Korea must disappear as well, and that it will do so.
Along with Cuba and a few others, it is among the last Communist terror regimes on earth, and we should deploy all peaceful means of exerting pressure – whether political or economic – in working towards the overthrow of this Communist dynasty and its repressive system, towards the release of the campaigners for freedom and resistance fighters in it, of whom there are over 200 000, for these people – who want nothing more than to practice a religion or to express their opinions freely – to be able to enjoy freedom of conscience, and the setting at liberty of those persons from Japan, South Korea and many other countries, who, on the flimsiest of pretexts, have been locked up in North Korea. In the case of many of them, it is not known whether they are still alive, and an urgent enquiry needs to be made in order to find out where these individuals are; that is the very least that this regime must do.
It is for that reason that I would like to make it clear that we are right to make the demand contained in the motion for a resolution, namely that we should resume the human rights dialogue with this country that was suspended in 2003 and that we should ask the Commission and the Council to conduct, in that context, in-depth conversations on human rights. We in this House, though, have, over and above that, the task of exerting massive pressure and of ensuring that the response to this is not in the form of words alone, but also of deeds and of the necessary political and economic pressure."@en1
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