Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-01-21-Speech-4-066"
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"en.20100121.5.4-066"2
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"Mr President, urgent resolutions are always a difficult exercise because more often than not, they reflect political impotence rather than a humanitarian emergency. The naming and shaming strategy that we apply every month is a last resort. It clearly means that all the other means of dialogue or of exerting pressure have proved ineffective and that, finding ourselves powerless to act, we condemn.
In the case of China, I am not sure that increasing the number of urgent resolutions as we have been doing – in March 2009, in November 2009, in January 2010, and in March 2010, with the other planned resolution – is productive. This is not because I underestimate the difficulty that China is having in managing its transition towards democracy; it is because I believe that, in constantly being on the offensive, it is not the target that is wrong but the strategy. There are other more convincing political tools.
I was the first person to request resolutions on the Uighurs and to harbour the sadly vain hope that capital punishments would in this way be avoided. On behalf of our group, I would like to give my support to Liu Xiaobo, the recently convicted Tiananmen dissident, whose only crime is his passion for democracy. However, I refuse to pillory China every two months, quite simply because that will not make it give in. Quite the contrary, in fact, because this key trade partner, this country which has a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, which is seeing intensive growth and is in the midst of democratic change, which we need in order to combat climate change, this country must be a partner to which one tells a few home truths but which one respects for the efforts that it undertakes. It is this respect that is missing in the resolution.
It is for these political reasons that my group has withdrawn its signature. However, to ensure that there is no ambiguity on the issue of human rights, which I value at least as much as you do, my group will vote in favour of all the amendments that relate to it. As regards the final outcome of the vote, that will depend on the amendments that we have tabled."@en1
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