Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2014-10-22-Speech-3-406-000"
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"en.20141022.23.3-406-000"2
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"Mr President, the siege of Kobane is being played out dramatically on our television screens as we all watch the black flag of ISIS from the hillsides across the border in Turkey. In this debate, I join calls for Turkey itself to play a full part in the international coalition. But those who simply want to use this issue to bash Turkey must equally acknowledge that the country is receiving more than 500 refugees a day from Kobane, according to UNHCR, and has given support already to 1.2 million refugees who have fled there from Syria during the past three years.
We should welcome the announcement that the Turkish border is open to Peshmerga forces, but remember that there are large numbers of diverse people fighting under the name Peshmerga, which simply means fighter in Kurdish. We have to acknowledge that this is not a conflict between armies, and there is proper concern about the rules of conflict being ignored. However, to call the Kurdish fighters terrorists – suggesting this is a fight between one set of terrorists and another, as Ankara has done – risks undermining opposition to IS and risks the progress of the Kurdish peace talks in Turkey too. These risks must be avoided.
As the new High Commissioner for Human Rights has said, IS is indeed the antithesis of human rights and ‘a diabolical, potentially genocidal movement’. Europe should support his call for Iraq to join the International Criminal Court to strengthen the legal, as well as the military, fight against them, and as we meet today the US State Department still says there is ‘a possibility that Kobane will fall to ISIL’.
But while the battle for Kobane is the focus of our debate today, the violence we want to see ended is that which continues across Iraq and Syria, with battles raging in the east of Syria and in the suburbs of Damascus adding to more than 200 000 deaths since the conflict began. What about the siege by Syrian forces of more than 300 000 people around Aleppo, who are literally being starved to death, and the 200 air strikes they mounted against their own people yesterday alone? So the questions we must raise should also still be about resolving the conflict in Syria, building legitimate opposition, bringing legal accountability for all responsible for the crimes of war and ....."@en1
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