Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-17-Speech-1-036-000"
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"en.20110117.11.1-036-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I admit that I would have liked this Parliament to measure up to the pride of the Tunisians who managed to defeat the dictator Ben Ali.
Ladies and gentlemen, the dictator has fallen, but the dictatorship, the structure of the dictatorship, still exists in Tunisia. Today, we need to be very careful. European governments and the majority of this Parliament have, for years, supported the structure of the dictatorship, and the Tunisian dictator. Just last week, most groups rejected a debate on Tunisia and refused to condemn Ben Ali.
The French Foreign Minister’s actions are just the latest example of the West’s complicity. Why is this? Because of fear; because people were afraid of Islamism. We are right to fear Islamist dictatorship, but what do these young people, these Tunisians who were absolutely not Islamists, who were fighting for freedom, have to do with that? Mr Bouazizi, who immolated himself, is the Jan Palach of Tunisia, and when Jan Palach immolated himself, this whole Parliament was behind him. We are not even able to stand behind Mr Bouazizi – that is the truth about this Parliament.
Now the Commission needs to act. It simply needs to say one thing; it needs to say to the Tunisians that it will not be possible for a democratic election in a country which has just emerged from dictatorship to take place within two months. No democratic basis exists in the country. There is no freedom of expression, and the media, radio and television are not free. A state printing office is all that exists.
It is for this reason that I ask the Commission to take the money from the association agreement and to use it to support freedom of expression in Tunisia and not to support Tunisian government organisations.
Second, the transitional government is not a government of national unity. Why? Because the majority of those who fought or those who are in exile have not yet returned, and are not recognised. Time is therefore needed so that democratic forces – not the forces ‘recognised’ by Ben Ali, but truly democratic forces – can develop.
The European Union must demonstrate that, for us, what is happening in Tunisia is the key to understanding and hope for all Arab countries. Democracy and Islam can go together, and if we are able to support the fledgling Tunisian democracy, we will see that in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and everywhere, the people and peoples will rise against their dictators.
We have a responsibility, all of us here, because in the end, Tunisians – who form part of the Arab world – are showing us that the hope of freedom that we saw in 1989 in the Eastern Bloc is now being born in a country such as Tunisia. Tomorrow, we will see this in Algeria, and the day after in Egypt and Jordan.
For that reason, therefore, it is unthinkable that this Parliament could remain seated and say: ‘Yes, perhaps; we do not know’. We did not know in 1989 how Poland would turn out. We did not know how Russia would turn out with Gorbachev. If we ask for an assurance every time people demand freedom – that is, if we ask them to tell us that the situation will definitely progress in a particular direction – we will never support freedom, and that is why I ask the Commission to move, give something, show the Tunisians that the realpolitik now is the policy of supporting democracy and no longer the policy of supporting the dictatorship structure."@en1
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